CDOQ

The excitement around Artificial Intelligence (AI) is contagious. Ever Curious Corporation, a startup I co-founded in 2015, was based on AI. A lot has changed since then. One of the most significant technical achievements has been the development of Transformer technology , which enabled the creation of Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). I’d like to take a moment to offer a cursory explanation of how LLMs work.  In simple terms, when you ask an LLM a question, it understands the question using the Transformer model, deep neural networks , and other methods for context, syntax, and semantics. It then responds based on this understanding. Before LLMs can be useful to humans, they have to be trained. There are three main techniques for training and enhancing the performance of an LLM: Fine-tuning: This process involves further training a pre-trained LLM on a specific dataset to improve its performance in particular tasks or domains. Humans oft...

Practical self-interest often prevails over abstract notions of identity.

Eventually, substance outshines the sparkle. 

There are thousands of technology companies working on building products, but only a few create products that delight their users. Generally, startup founders or product leaders start with a beautiful product vision, but what eventually gets released is not as pretty or delightful (see Figure 1). The main reason is that building products requires many people who think differently to work together, resulting in a compromise.  Figure 1 - Vision vs. Reality (image courtesy of Christine Wang) How do you build the culture and process that delivers products that delight users? The answer is simple: solve user problems and don’t compromise on the product vision. However, executing this simple idea is hard. Let's explore how we can make it a bit easier throughout the rest of this article. The organization needs a clear mission and an understanding of how solving user problems will deliver on that mission. Customers don’t buy your products because they like your mission; they buy them becau...

How do you effectively lead an organization? There's no one-size-fits-all answer. It depends on various factors, including the organization's size and industry, your leadership style, the experience of your management team, and more. Throughout my career, I've held various management roles (GM, CEO, CPO, VP, etc.) in organizations ranging from startups to those generating $100 billion in annual revenue. This experience has allowed me to develop a set of guiding principles that I not only operate by, but also share with my teams. They are: 1. Ready. Shoot. Aim Thanks to Sam Walton , founder of Walmart, for this principle. This mindset was instrumental in the growth and success of Walmart, as it fostered a culture of experimentation, rapid response to market demands, and continuous improvement. It means that you should prepare to take action and, instead of spending time in deliberation and planning (aim), take action (shoot) and iterate your way to the target. 2. Understand...

Last weekend, I finished reading - What I learned about investing from Darwin . It is a fascinating book that shows how evolution theory can be used to create an investment strategy. I might be biased towards liking the book because I used evolution theory to explain how Silicon Valley works . I found the following two concepts particularly interesting: 1. One selected behavioral trait of animals can trigger many physical changes in animals over generations. Following edited excerpt clarifies the idea: A sixty-year-long study focused on selecting silver foxes for only one trait: their willingness to be tamed. The researchers were not interested in body size, coat color, skull shape, ear stiffness, or any other physical characteristics. They took great care to ensure that selection was based solely on tameness. However, this single behavioral characteristic triggered many physical changes in the animals.  This principle is applied at Nalanda Capital (NC), the investment firm ...

Google spends a lot of time and money developing the Transformer , the technology behind ChatGPT, but does not commercialize it. Microsoft invests billions of dollars in OpenAI , the company behind ChatGPT, to commercialize the technology. Apple makes a deal with OpenAI to incorporate ChatGPT into the latest iPhones without paying much for it. Apple will make billions of dollars by selling new hardware with minimal AI investment. :)