Dalton & Michael</a>, YC Group Partners Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel open up about how they feel about AI right now — where the conversation around AI tends to go astray, how startups are adopting AI (in ways both good and bad!), and why they’re excited about the people they see starting companies in this field right now.</p><figure class=\"kg-card kg-embed-card\"><iframe width=\"200\" height=\"113\" src=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://www.youtube.com/embed/smHw9kEwcgM?feature=oembed\%22 frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen title=\"Will OpenAI Kill All Startups?\"></iframe></figure><p>“There are people that I’ve been funding,” says Dalton, “They have a great job, they actually like their job, and they’re <em>choosing </em>to leave because they know at this moment in history — because they’ve become domain experts at AI — that this is the moment to do a startup. Imagine if you worked on cloud computing for years, and then all of a sudden Amazon Web Services comes out. You’d be like ‘Oh! They’re calling me in! This is my moment!'\"</p><p>One key takeaway that comes in around the 10 minute mark: if you’re building in this space, what’s only possible now <em>because </em>of these tools? What’s that deeper, second layer? Comparing it to the possibilities opened up by the iPhone and the App Store, Michael makes the analogy: “It was obvious that maps would come to the phone. It <em>wasn’t</em> obvious that Uber was going to come.”</p>","comment_id":"64b0083379e563000180f96e","feature_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/07/Dalton-and-Michael.png","featured":true,"visibility":"public","email_recipient_filter":"none","created_at":"2023-07-13T07:20:35.000-07:00","updated_at":"2023-07-13T09:03:25.000-07:00","published_at":"2023-07-13T09:01:35.000-07:00","custom_excerpt":"Will ever-evolving AI models grow to consume the idea of startups as we know it, or is this the beginning of a whole new era for startups — akin to the arrival of the iPhone?","codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"custom_template":null,"canonical_url":null,"authors":[{"id":"645000ebb09be6000165fbad","name":"Greg Kumparak","slug":"greg","profile_image":"/blog/content/images/2023/05/greg.jpeg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Greg oversees editorial content at Y Combinator. He was previously an editor at TechCrunch for nearly 15 years.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/greg/"}],"tags":[{"id":"64b0131679e563000180f9ab","name":"Dalton and Michael","slug":"dalton-and-michael","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/dalton-and-michael/"},{"id":"61fe29efc7139e0001a71172","name":"Video","slug":"video","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/video/"}],"primary_author":{"id":"645000ebb09be6000165fbad","name":"Greg Kumparak","slug":"greg","profile_image":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/content/images/2023/05/greg.jpeg","cover_image":null,"bio":"Greg oversees editorial content at Y Combinator. He was previously an editor at TechCrunch for nearly 15 years.","website":null,"location":null,"facebook":null,"twitter":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/author/greg/"},"primary_tag":{"id":"64b0131679e563000180f9ab","name":"Dalton and Michael","slug":"dalton-and-michael","description":null,"feature_image":null,"visibility":"public","og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"codeinjection_head":null,"codeinjection_foot":null,"canonical_url":null,"accent_color":null,"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/tag/dalton-and-michael/"},"url":"https://ghost.prod.ycinside.com/dalton-and-michael-on-ai/","excerpt":"Will ever-evolving AI models grow to consume the idea of startups as we know it, or is this the beginning of a whole new era for startups — akin to the arrival of the iPhone?","reading_time":1,"access":true,"og_image":null,"og_title":null,"og_description":null,"twitter_image":null,"twitter_title":null,"twitter_description":null,"meta_title":null,"meta_description":null,"email_subject":null,"frontmatter":null,"feature_image_alt":"Title card that reads \"Dalton & Michael\"","feature_image_caption":null},"mentions":[],"related_posts":[{"id":"61fe29f1c7139e0001a7199e","uuid":"1b1c1b40-92d1-4b23-88e4-584b035f311b","title":"Scaling Growth | Gustaf Alstromer (YC Partner + Airbnb) & Ed Baker (Uber)","slug":"scaling-growth-panel","html":"<!--kg-card-begin: html--><p>Gustaf Alstromer, <a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://ycombinator.wpengine.com/welcome-eric-gustaf-and-jocelyn//">YC’s newest Partner</a> (formerly product lead for Growth at Airbnb) joined a panel with Ed Baker, (former Head of Growth at Uber), to share tips on growth experiments and team dynamics at a scaling company.</p>\n<p>Topics discussed:</p>\n<p><strong>What is a north star metric for growth?</strong> If you talk to anyone on the growth team, and ask them, “what number are we trying to grow.” They’d be able to say that number. And if they aren’t working on something that could grow that number, they’re probably working on the wrong thing. At the time Ed was at Facebook, retention and user engagement contributed even more to the north star metric (MAUs) than new user acquisition.</p>\n<p><strong>Paid acquisition can further accelerate growth:</strong> Growth isn’t only about organic growth — especially for companies who charge for their products. In a competitive market, it can make sense to pay to acquire up to the potential value of a customer if it’s important to grow quickly (this was true for Uber, who had to beat competition to market).</p>\n<p><strong>Is there a channel with particular upside right now?</strong> Nothing beats building a great product. Beyond that, most great companies get really good at one specific channel — so figure out what your product is best suited for and double down on it (make sure it’s a channel that can scale — meaning that channel potentially has 100s of millions of people coming through it).</p>\n<p><strong>You should be seeing things that are counterintuitive in your data:</strong> If you aren’t, you probably aren’t experimenting enough.</p>\n<p><strong>A little wording change can matter:</strong> As an example, Facebook saw low growth in Japan, and went and talked to people in the local market and found that people felt it was rude to “invite” friends to Facebook. They found through a growth experiment that changing the wording to “announce to your friends you’re on Facebook” (instead of “invite”), they immediately began to see growth there.</p>\n<p><strong>Make it easy for users:</strong> The simplest thing you could do today to help strengthen user data is to not log people out. This practice is bad for growth, and Amazon is a great example of doing it right.</p>\n<p><strong>Eventually, the whole company is a growth team:</strong> At Airbnb today, every big team uses data to fuel decisions. That’s the goal. The growth team should not only be collaborating across the business, but you should start to see most areas join in on a cadence of experimentation.</p>\n<p>This panel was recorded at The Scaleup Offsite, an event for growth-stage CEOs hosted by Y Combinator Continuity and Greylock Partners. Josh Elman from Greylock Partners moderated this panel.</p>\n<hr />\n<div id=\"backtracks-player\" data-bt-embed=\"https://player.backtracks.fm/ycombinator/ycombinator/m/13-scaling-growth-gustaf-alstromer-ed-baker-and-josh-elman\" data-bt-theme=\"orange\" data-bt-show-art-cover=\"true\" data-bt-show-comments=\"true\">\n</div>\n<p><script>(function(p,l,a,y,e,r,s){if(p[y]) return;if(p[e]) return p[e]();s=l.createElement(a);l.head.appendChild((s.async=p[y]=true,s.src=r,s))}(window,document,\"script\",\"__btL\",\"__btR\",\"https://player.backtracks.fm/embedder.js\"))</script></p>\n<p><script>\n(function(p,l,a,y,e,r,s){if(p[y]) return;\nif(p[e]) return p[e]();s=l.createElement(a);\nl.head.appendChild((s.async=p[y]=true,s.src=r,s))\n}(window,document,'script','__btL','__btR',\n'https://player.backtracks.fm/embedder.js'))\n</script></p>\n<p><script>\n!function(n,i,s,c){n[s]||(n[s]=function(i){n[s].q.push(i)}),n[s].q||(n[s].q=[]),\nc=i.createElement(\"script\"),\nc.async=1,\nc.src=\"https://c.bktrks.com/utils-1.0.0.all.min.js\",\ni.head.appendChild(c)}(window,document,\"BTUtils\");\nBTUtils(function(use) {\n var options = {\n autoplayLinks: false\n };\n use('backtracks-autolink', options).init();\n});\n</script></p>\n<hr />\n<h1>Subscribe</h1>\n<p><a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/y-combinator/id1236907421/">iTunes
Google Play</a><br />\n<a href=https://www.ycombinator.com/"http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/y-combinator/">Stitcher
SoundCloud
RSS/n
/n by
Y Combinator