Chris Rorie

building data products (ex-Snap, Foursquare, Apple)

[austin petersmith @awwstn]

i've never met him, but sam altman has had many positive impacts on me over the years. so, i would like to weigh in with some counterpoints that were ignored in ronan farrow's lengthy op-ed about how he is the devil:

- when SVB was collapsing, sam spent the weekend wiring personal cash to startups that feared they would miss payroll. no ratchet terms, no written terms at all, just money out the window and trust that it would work out

- when VCs tried to destroy parker conrad, sam stepped in and leveraged his influence to get them to leave him alone

- sam created a free course at stanford on entrepreneurship that has been watched by millions and helped inspire many thousands of entrepreneurs

- sam took YC from a small (albeit dominant) accelerator to a scaled machine that deploys hundreds of millions of dollars supporting an entire generation of founders, most of whom show up as outsiders

- when sam was fired, he had such deep loyalty among employees that 90%+ were going to walk out the door if he didn’t return. that is not the norm for an ousted leader, by a long shot

- ronan farrow would have you believe sam is a master manipulator who takes advantage of everyone around him. who exactly is he manipulating and taking advantage of? his employees who are on the ride of a lifetime building products loved by millions? his investors who universally boast openai first and foremost in their portfolios? his customers who happily pay billions of dollars for said products?

- sam literally helped brute force an industrial revolution into existence. without his perseverance you do not get chatgpt. what did that give us? an explosion of innovation, GDP growth, a domestic manufacturing and construction boom. a global reduction in friction to create things, build products, and get work done. the most promising path so far to curing cancer and solving climate change and countless other humanity-scale problems. ironically, without sam you do not get the essay Machines of Loving Grace, let alone the abundance that essay promises

so instead of dwelling on the fact that in 2011 some employees at sam’s company weren’t happy that he misrepresented his ping pong skills, i think i’ll bask in awe at the future we are living in, which sam helped pull forward

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

Growth rates are only proxies for moats.

It’s perhaps the primary lesson good investors learn on their way to becoming great investors.

[Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion]

Hmm yeah

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

Sweeet thx @OpenAI - Canvas delivers

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

I would love if ChatGPT enabled in-line replies ala Slack so that one could highlight specific lines of GPT's response for quick clarification rather than responding at the bottom of the entire output, requiring written specification of the points being addressed cc @OpenAI

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

All these dunks on Nate Silver’s predictive swings are moronic.

Election outcomes are based on fractions of % pt changes; the polling is conducted FREQUENTLY because opinion shifts FREQUENTLY and small shifts can cause large swings if you’re monitoring it accurately.

[Nate Silver @NateSilver538]

Imagine changing your mind as information changes

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

I would love if ChatGPT enabled in-line replies ala Slack so that one could highlight specific lines of GPT's response for quick clarification rather than responding at the bottom of the entire output, requiring written specification of the points being addressed cc @OpenAI

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

Great post re: valuation for anyone who’s struggled to grasp discount rates (i.e. opposite of compound interest w/ all the exponentially that entails)

[tyler hogge @thogge]

New Post: The Awful Arithmetic of Valuation

https://t.co/lUwMu4axFI

i wrote a few thoughts on how companies are valued, explained as simply as i know how, with a quote from warren buffett I think about all the time. 👇

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

Great piece on energy / climate change by @notboringco @packyM. Fun contextualization & thorough synthesis of current research/evidence. 🔥

https://t.co/D93zmwXQCN

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

(I used to think I was a decently good writer. Now I use Claude.)

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

I ❤️ Claude for editing any kind of writing. Kudos to the @AnthropicAI team, it's become a must-have tool for me.

Give it a try: https://t.co/VRtTrtf4Gg

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

The X app icon on iOS is now a sweet graphic tee

[Rory Sutherland @rorysutherland]

This will be fun. Soon, in line with costly signalling theory, all formal and polite communications will need to be laced with profanities, to prove that we are not using ChatGPT. "Dear Fat Bastard, I am writing to apply for the dope fucking job you advertised...."

[Will Summerlin @WSummerlinAI]

Game theory on the Bing announcement…

Microsoft is trying to lower Google’s search margins which will make it harder for Google to continue running Cloud and other competitive businesses at a loss.

Google processes ~8.5 billion searches per day. The noise around Bing/AI will force Google to release an AI chat feature within search. The current inference costs for LLMs are significantly higher than search - likely 10x or more. In addition, the monetization model for AI chat is unclear, but it's likely different than the ad-based model Google has mastered.

Google's search business is highly profitable and funds other loss-making business lines. Historically, they have operated cloud at a loss (-$480mm in Q4 FY22) to compete more aggressively. Lowering search margins applies pressure to every other Alphabet business…many of which are competitive with Microsoft.

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

@tom_morganKCP I’m shocked how many people don’t understand the impact of shares outstanding on share price. They think a $100 stock is a 10x higher value company than a $10 stock.

[James McRae @jockyblue82]

A superb read on AI @mrianleslie. I better understand my apathy to Marvel and my dismay at how VAR has altered football as a result. It's not so much that machines are becoming more like us, it's that we're more willing to accept a machine like world... https://t.co/8I1mDWyZTT

[Patagonia @patagonia]

Instead of “going public,” you could say we’re “going purpose.” Instead of extracting value from nature and transforming it into wealth for investors, we’ll use the wealth Patagonia creates to protect the source of all wealth.

Read Yvon's letter at https://t.co/TolGLfHEGG

[nader dabit @dabit3]

I got Stable Diffusion running on my M1 Mac in just a few minutes using this tutorial, really simple and straight forward.

https://t.co/pTqKldf57R

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

NYC at its best spurs the feeling Disney parks shoot for. And this provides maybe my fav notion of what NYC is: a City of Amusement like none other. Where people, culture, work, all of it, are larger than life. And it’s real life, to boot.

[Ben Bear @BenBear]

What’s a startup conspiracy theory you believe?

Mine: OKRs were actually a psyop from Google to slow down potential early stage competitors

[Chris Rorie @chrisrorie]

@Kasaidi this looks amazing Kas, great job!!