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David George

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
See mentions of this person in podcasts
942 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

There are some head fakes that we've seen of things that grow really fast and then they fall off and they're experimental.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

So the things that have durable behavior, things like cursor, where the users really, really use it and ideally or increasingly use it over time.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

Harvey is an example of a company where as the models have gotten better, customer engagement and usage has actually really grown significantly.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

It actually took a step change, which we've seen, which is interesting to see because it happened at the same time as the reasoning breakthroughs.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

We were like, oh, that makes sense, actually.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

Lawyers need to reason.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

And it turns out models got really good at reasoning and people use the products a lot more.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

So ease of customer acquisition, the behavior that we observe on customer retention engagement, and then there's gross margins.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

And we give a little bit of a pass on gross margins right now.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

We're in this funny environment where late stage SaaS cloud

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

We would look at a company and it's like, oh man, if you're not 70% plus gross margin, you're not really a SaaS business or cloud business, whatever.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

And that's going to be a knock and people will trade you differently.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

And that's when you get valued as revenue versus gross profit or whatever.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

Now it's like a badge of honor to have low gross margins because we're like, oh, at least people are using your AI products.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

We get these pitches and they're like, I'm an AI thing and I got 75% gross margins.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

I'm like, well, no one's using the AI stuff then.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

That doesn't really seem like an AI product to me.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

So we give a little bit of a pass on that.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

The expectation is the cost is going to continue to go down.

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
David George - Building a16z Growth, Investing Across the AI Stack, and Why Markets Misprice Growth - [Invest Like the Best, EP.450]

Just the inference cost.