As there is no open source version of Excel except Libreoffice, working to build the core Excel functionality with other open source packages. Then bringing in agentic editing functionality for real world data.
What is also has been interesting is to introduce banker/consultant formatting guidelines to the agent and making it beautify its work whether in tables or models.
Strongly suspect OAI can't afford 20B cash. Their latest funding round was 40B, and they're burning through money like it's rice paper. They could offer OAI equity, but Cursor's founders would probably be very suspicious of private valued stock (which is fairy money).
How wise it is to buy Cursor is another question. Current valuation has them at 100x revenue. And I suspect agentic products will be a lot less cash flow positive than traditional SaaS because of the massive cost of all that constant codebase context and stream of code.
> The initial funding will be $10 billion, followed by the remaining $30 billion by the end of 2025, the person said. But the round comes with a caveat. SoftBank said in an updated disclosure on Monday that its total investment could be slashed to as low as $20 billion if OpenAI doesn’t restructure into a for-profit entity by Dec. 31.
They had raised a Series C investment recently. Historically that puts ownership of founders and employees at around 40%. Could be a lot higher for a hot AI company though.
Given two founders, AI company, Series C, and a $3bn purchase price they could each have netted around $750 million in a good scenario. Less if they cashed out in secondaries in previous rounds (which would have been smart). Fantastic outcome for them, obviously. This is the 0.001% scenario that founders dream about.
Fair, but worth noting the founders almost certainly already have gotten fat secondaries, and now have a chance to build something much larger if they can execute.
I launched and shut down a sales tech startup. This was the exact experience we had with earlier stage companies, particularly startups that do not have product market fit
Considering they only have “hundreds” of paid users despite how much money they’ve likely burned through, I’m guessing they just couldn’t raise enough additional capital to keep the lights on.
I think it's interesting that they note they have hundreds of customers but their home page says it's trusted by thousands of companies. Are all these companies on a free tier?
I would imagine it's the usual SaaS marketing embellishment, e.g. one Google employee used the software on a trial at some point === "Trusted by Google"
First time I've ever seen this. Came to the comments to see if anyone else experienced that. I don't see openra in the blocklist but perhaps I need to look again.
For one of my product we spray and prayed, iterated fast and have not necessarily got/found PMF yet.
For my products we are 'pre-selling' (which feels much much better):
We've been reaching potential customers on LinkedIn, asking them for 15 mins to give feedback on our 'product' (at this point is just a sales deck).
At the end of the 'pitch' we get feedback from the customer. We also explain that we're launching a pilot, and give them an opportunity to join the pilot.
The pilot is paid (but cheaper than the public pricing will be), and it involves signing a v.simple 1 page contract/agreement which allows us to invoice them ahead of the 'launch'.
For us, this has been incredibly effective at:
- Understanding if this product hits a pain-point that customers are actually willing to spend budget on
- Weeding out the 'weak' signals like 'I quite like it' (people who 'like' it but may never buy)
- Giving us financial/commercial confidence, since we have invoiceable revenue guaranteed
And what it feels like? It feels awesome!
Sometimes, when you find somebody that really gets it, their body language and attitude is entirely different....they literally PULL the product from your hands (vs. you pushing it on them). They're asking questions like "when can we launch/try it", and "can I introduce you to X Y Z people, who are going to love this?". And they say things like "We're budget constrained, but there are tons of things I'd rather get rid of, to make budget for this"
As there is no open source version of Excel except Libreoffice, working to build the core Excel functionality with other open source packages. Then bringing in agentic editing functionality for real world data.
What is also has been interesting is to introduce banker/consultant formatting guidelines to the agent and making it beautify its work whether in tables or models.
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