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That is indeed a better criticism, but it happens to follow the same template as another common startup criticism: "It hasn't been tried before, so we don't kno

That is indeed a better criticism, but it happens to follow the same template as another common startup criticism: "It hasn't been tried before, so we don't know whether it will work." Yes. That's true. It might not work. And you're probably even correct. But that's always true, and the most valuable cases are those that work when most people don't expect them to. http://paulgraham.com/swan.html http://paulgraham.com/swan.html You say that every other VC does this. But if other VCs are training ML models, they don't seem to be publishing their results, so I'm inclined to say that this is new. Is it going to work? Well, we'll have to see. But as with most startups, the answer is "probably not, but the chance may be significantly better than random."

_hyn3 5y ago
> But that's always true, and the most valuable cases are those that work when most people don't expect them to. http://paulgraham.com/swan.html http://paulgraham.com/swan.html If they are looking for swans that work when people don't expect them to, they should probably be looking for those swans somewhere else*, not the top 3% of an incubator that probably graduates proportionately more successful startups than any university. The issue that everyone is calling out here is that they name themselves "Rebel" when they're doing exactly the same thing that every other VC firm is, but (apparently) not even as well -- at least they should say "Founder Friendly", etc. * Generally startups that might become unexpected swans will be found outside of startup hubs like silicon valley.