152 karma · joined February 22, 2013
anandnvemuri at gmail.com
It may be true that AI is unpopular in the west more generally though, not just America.
With LLMs the better I get at the scaffolding and prompting, the less it feels like catherding (so far at least). Hence the comparison.
Sure it was easier to do it myself. But putting in the time to train, give context, develop guardrails, learn how to monitor etc ultimately taught me the skills needed to delegate effectively and multiply the teams output massively as we added people.
It's early days but I'm getting the same feeling with LLMs. It's as exhausting as training an overconfident but talented intern, but if you can work through it and somehow get it to produce something as good as you would do yourself, it's a massive multiplier.
P.S. Nice of him to not mention the "built an unscalable org and burnt myself out" plateau :)
* Remote individual workers are the least attractive customer for the typical coworking space (that isn't a cafe). Small and unpredictable revenue, plus higher support per head, since the account is only one head.
* Remote workers also aren't a great fit for you. Very few like to hop around. Their reasons are typically avoiding loneliness, finding a reliable place to focus etc. And so would only use your platform until they find a space they like.
* SMBs are the sweet spot. Coworking is cheaper AND less overhead for them. In many countries they don't get access to grade A space even if they're willing to pay. For the coworking space, it's only slightly more work than a solo account and significantly more recurring and reliable revenue. You may be better off targeting small teams.
* One particular pain point is expiring inventory - remote workers actually fit this well since they're willing to go for a floating desk. Most spaces would be willing to offer discounts on this. Kind of like last minute flight or hotel deals.
* Another related product is meeting and conference room bookings. Also expires and has a market in WFH teams.
* The last two also have a better business model fit since they are intermittent and people may be more inclined to shop around, allowing you to take a cut of every transaction. For any kind of recurring contract, you're probably limited to taking a one time lead gen or brokerage fee since you have no grounds to maintain a relationship with the customer after the initial match.
- Greater productivity. A single carriage driver can now drive a bus, so fewer carriages are needed
- Lower costs/ higher demand. Everyone who walked can now afford the bus, so the number of drivers goes up even if fewer drivers are needed per traveler.
In general the cut once advice is not to make people less skittish immediately, it's to avoid the long term mistrust that comes from cutting repeatedly. When you do that, the message is you are either incompetent or you hid information from them the first time. A bigger one time cut is more shocking, but things settle down after and you have an opportunity to start building trust back up and put the company on an upward trajectory people will want to stay on.