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There seem to be a lot of startups that are simply a thin veneer on top of the OpenAI APIs. We're going to see more and more functionality swept up into the Ope

There seem to be a lot of startups that are simply a thin veneer on top of the OpenAI APIs. We're going to see more and more functionality swept up into the OpenAI offering. If I was in one of those startups I'd be getting a little bit worried.

gaganyaan 3y ago
The advice remains eternal of not building your product on someone else's platform.
- unshavedyak 3y ago
  Seeing the money some thin apps have already made, seems fine if you have your expectations set correctly. Ie small app, quick to publish, get what you can while you can.
- colesantiago 3y ago
  I don't think Jasper, Copy.ai and other similar startups got the memo.
- adventured 3y ago
  That doesn't actually exist in reality. You will always have to build on someone else's platforms. Convenience store? You have to have land (and or rent: dependent), you have to pay taxes to the government on that land, you have to buy product from suppliers/vendors (platform), you have to advertise on platforms (newspaper, radio, tv, online, something), you have to hire (dependent on labor, dependent on advertising for hiring). You're probably going to end up with an accountant eventually if you have any success, dependent. You need a wide variety of basic supplies to operate your store (from t-shirt bags to cleaning supplies), dependent. You need a POS system, dependent. The list is very long. There's no scenario where you can ever not be dependent on other platforms and services, in one form or another. I'd challenge anybody on HN to name a case where you can avoid them. Selling loose rocks out of a cave by shouting out for customers? Maybe. Need an operating system? Now you're dependent on a platform. On Ubuntu, on Windows, something. Need to do AI? Say hello to Nvidia, Intel or AMD (but almost always Nvidia). Now you're dependent. Need energy? Utility companies, now you're dependent on another company. Which is no different than any other critical dependency for your business: it goes down, you go down. You need a datacenter for self-hosting. And or you need a cloud. And or you need fiber to the home. And or you need server hardware. And or you need an office building. And or you need electricity. And or you need xyz and on it goes for any variety of scenarios you can possibly name. Most likely you're dependent on dozens of other platforms and services and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Want to reach people? Say hello to Reddit, or TikTok, or Instagram, or Google search, or 30 other options, but most likely only a few are going to work really well for whatever you're doing. Now you're dependent. The only actual option is to pick wisely - to the extent possible - what/who your dependencies are, and be prepared to switch to alternatives if you can.
lolinder 3y ago
I don't know why anyone would be surprised at this turn of events. It's been pretty obvious all along that it was only a matter of time before OpenAI started productizing, so unless your startup is serving a very specific niche that you know inside and out, it's hard to see how anyone could justify starting a business whose value proposition is "combine these two ready-made OpenAI APIs".
esafak 3y ago
The age old challenge of upstarts building distribution versus incumbents building features.
dontupvoteme 3y ago
They also keep silently worsening their API (persumably for a moat) When turbo-gpt3.5-instruct launched you could see logprobs of words that you had in the prompt, then suddenly one day you couldn't, because it's "not possible" or "not available" or something like that.
- msp26 3y ago
  It's for your own safety /s
  - dontupvoteme 3y ago
    my only hope was to estimate how funny a punchline may be based on how rare/unexpected it was. humour considered harmful.

gaganyaan 3y ago

The advice remains eternal of not building your product on someone else's platform.

unshavedyak 3y ago
Seeing the money some thin apps have already made, seems fine if you have your expectations set correctly. Ie small app, quick to publish, get what you can while you can.
colesantiago 3y ago
I don't think Jasper, Copy.ai and other similar startups got the memo.
adventured 3y ago
That doesn't actually exist in reality. You will always have to build on someone else's platforms. Convenience store? You have to have land (and or rent: dependent), you have to pay taxes to the government on that land, you have to buy product from suppliers/vendors (platform), you have to advertise on platforms (newspaper, radio, tv, online, something), you have to hire (dependent on labor, dependent on advertising for hiring). You're probably going to end up with an accountant eventually if you have any success, dependent. You need a wide variety of basic supplies to operate your store (from t-shirt bags to cleaning supplies), dependent. You need a POS system, dependent. The list is very long. There's no scenario where you can ever not be dependent on other platforms and services, in one form or another. I'd challenge anybody on HN to name a case where you can avoid them. Selling loose rocks out of a cave by shouting out for customers? Maybe. Need an operating system? Now you're dependent on a platform. On Ubuntu, on Windows, something. Need to do AI? Say hello to Nvidia, Intel or AMD (but almost always Nvidia). Now you're dependent. Need energy? Utility companies, now you're dependent on another company. Which is no different than any other critical dependency for your business: it goes down, you go down. You need a datacenter for self-hosting. And or you need a cloud. And or you need fiber to the home. And or you need server hardware. And or you need an office building. And or you need electricity. And or you need xyz and on it goes for any variety of scenarios you can possibly name. Most likely you're dependent on dozens of other platforms and services and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Want to reach people? Say hello to Reddit, or TikTok, or Instagram, or Google search, or 30 other options, but most likely only a few are going to work really well for whatever you're doing. Now you're dependent. The only actual option is to pick wisely - to the extent possible - what/who your dependencies are, and be prepared to switch to alternatives if you can.

lolinder 3y ago

I don't know why anyone would be surprised at this turn of events. It's been pretty obvious all along that it was only a matter of time before OpenAI started productizing, so unless your startup is serving a very specific niche that you know inside and out, it's hard to see how anyone could justify starting a business whose value proposition is "combine these two ready-made OpenAI APIs".

esafak 3y ago

The age old challenge of upstarts building distribution versus incumbents building features.

dontupvoteme 3y ago

They also keep silently worsening their API (persumably for a moat) When turbo-gpt3.5-instruct launched you could see logprobs of words that you had in the prompt, then suddenly one day you couldn't, because it's "not possible" or "not available" or something like that.

msp26 3y ago
It's for your own safety /s
- dontupvoteme 3y ago
  my only hope was to estimate how funny a punchline may be based on how rare/unexpected it was. humour considered harmful.