Unblakeable

For AI startups, here’s how to set yourself up for success:

-Define Your Niche Precisely: Focus with laser-like precision on a specific, painful problem in the market that you can solve.

-Validate Market Demand: Conduct thorough customer research and surveys to confirm that there is a demand for your AI solution.

-Show a Path to Profitability: Investors want to see a clear, realistic plan for making a profit, not just promises of growth over several years.

What do you think about AI company success?

Risk Management Mondays: Technology Disruption Gives No Fair Warning

One of my favorite services is EasyBib - an online citation creator that formats websites and other research sources into proper citations using a multitude of formats (I am partial to MA8).

It's a lifesaver. I love using footnotes but hate formatting them. Always have since the third grade. Then I discovered EasyBib over 10 years ago, and it changed my professional life.

A couple of years ago they were bought by Chegg, which is basically a homework assistance service that I guess somehow isn't cheating when students use it. I dunno. I just use the bibliography tool.

But now it's in trouble because ChatGPT can do for free what Chegg took years and thousands of hours of manpower to create. Although Chegg hasn't lost that many subscribers, their stock price has, well... glub glub. (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Chegg rode high during the pandemic, and then, like so many companies, the worst news ever was life returning to normal. But then they got hit by ChatGPT...

The second ChatGPT broke onto the stage a few years ago, Chegg should have seen the disruption and responded. Whether they saw it or not, I don't know, but they haven't made an obvious response.

How would you respond? I'm glad you asked!

Chegg should have been developing its own large language model from Day 1, using the vast amount of data it has created and collected, thereby creating a proprietary AI platform that can beat ChatGPT at its own game. Maybe it already is, but if not, it's probably too late for them to catch up.

What's going to happen - what HAS to happen is that for companies to compete, they are going to hoard data, hoard machine learning talent, and develop specialty LLMs that are really, really good in their field of expertise. In effect, the ChatGPTs and Claudes of the world will be general practitioners, and everyone else needs to become specialists.

So, if you're afraid of ChatGPT wiping you out, the response is not unlike any field of expertise. Specialize and niche. Develop an LLM that is hyper-focused in a narrow field of knowledge but will be the deepest in that field - or create some other form of differentiation (creativity?).

In technology, you have to be proactive because technology is like Liam Neeson in Taken. If you try to hide from it, it will find you, and it will kill you.