Darshan

research & investments @polarisfund | excited about web3, ai & frontier tech

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@roshanonline Being the patients?

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@puneetiitm @UltrahumanHQ @cybersahu Will love to try this, sent a dm

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@puneetiitm had actually DMed u too, just wanted to say hi :)

would be cool to be connected

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@puneetiitm ah ok ok makes sense, because i agree semis/power/ nuclear too (if regulations provide) will be a big play in India.

so have been keen to double down on these n track players closely

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@lacey_wisdom @plcapital amazing 🔥

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@ethanyish Hey Ethan - just dropped u a note. Pls if u could check :)

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@jongall45 @frontrunvc incredible work ser

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@tejeshwi_sharma what's probably the biggest bottleneck for it? combo of low ARPU + gpu import dependancy?

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@donnfelker @0xPolygon hey Donn - sent you a note.

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@donnfelker @0xPolygon 🔥

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@annanay 👀

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@0xBebis_ interesting one 👀

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@paraschopra it only literally took me 1-2hrs to set up an e2e flow for a task that used to take like 1-2hrs a day n now it's pretty self serve n keeps running by itself, completing the same job in 2-3mins max lol

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@0xBebis_ @uv yes for sure would love to

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

Imo there will not be such a thing as "enough training data" (atleast for the next 5-7yrs), there will always be need and consumption demand.

Margins will definitely compress i agree, but i also think they won't actually go to zero.

Mainly see an opportunity around them still being relevant for a long period for SLMs/ domain-specific usecases

I feel these data labs will mostly turn into specialised usecases and see exits via acquisitions to one of these frontier AI labs

[Jamie Quint @jamiequint]

On Mercor, Handshake, Surge AI, Turing, Micro1, etc.

If you're considering making a career move I would not go work at any of these companies.

These businesses are a race to the bottom. There is no structural defensibility in outsourced research/training data for a set of 5-10 very large customers.

Once the frontier labs have to start caring about margins, one of two things will happen: they will drive vendor margins down until these businesses trade at 0.5–1x revenue, like every other staffing company (potentially worse because of the customer concentration risk), or they vertically integrate.

All arguments about how these are important outsourced research companies that the labs really value are cope.

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@neilhar would love to jam!

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@davidgan1818 @_inceptioncap David just reached out to jam n exchange notes if cool 🫡

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@Hercules_Defi @Shaughnessy119 @pierskicks @Delphi_Ventures Couldn’t make the cut with the big guns 🥹🥲

Feeling sad :(

[Darshan @DarshanG_]

@mlmabc @WazzCrypto @binance What’s the way you’re tracking the linkage? I mean any specific tool u use - meaning to see this especially from API side