Paul, Deon & Tong

A conversation with Devindra on the possibilities of ChatGPT and other Large Language Models for education in India and other Middle and Low-Income Countries. While these large language models today mainly work in the cloud and require high-speed internet connectivity, the promise is that smaller models that are more specialized have already been ported to MacBook Pro M1 and other laptops. And with advances like 4-bit quantization, there is the possibility they can even run on modern smartphones.The experience in China and in India is that parents will save inordinately to give their children a better life than theirs. Both Devindra and I are the beneficiaries of that thinking and we are forever grateful to our parents for their sacrifice. So, this means that there is a possibility that there could be a commercial incentive which is much better than constantly asking for charitable dollars.The new LLMs promise interactivity and individualized instruction that was impossible before. Early demonstrations of learning a foreign language are promising as is the student being able to ask the "why" of how Python is structured, not just the "get it done" without understanding that online education often creates.Finally, having an eye toward inclusivity for everyone of any gender, race or social status is something that needs to be baked in. We look forward to helping!

This time, we bumble through an episode featuring the amazing Mike Conte and we talk about what's wrong with this Podcast technically (see below), about ChatGPT, and about how you don't want to show others the Money. Mike is as always hilarious! Ok, our exploration of Podcasting continues with tech glitches galore. First of all apologies to our 15 viewers. Please use this version as the audio had terrible cutouts because I was messing with the audio, this should work better (and it has the brightness turned down from 400 nits to 300 nits which help a little on TV-type HDR systems). a) the segment producer problem and move to a news section and then a special topic, the news will be on cool things in Tech from AI to Gadgets to Smart Home, things opinionated Verge) b) Audio, yes there are lots of glitches here, I had not realized that OBS really requires all manual controls. I just want Automatic Gain Control and Radio voice, but I'm learning. The audio in this one is very quiet because I had the Gain stage turned up, but didn't realize the compressor also had gained. And the Final Cut Pro gain is only 12dB. Also, I didn't realize how the Noise suppressor and gain work on low signals (like it cuts them out) and Zoom is very low. c) Video, I've been mastering in HDR and the default in OBS is for 400 nits peak brightness, but while this looks awesome on iPhone, Mac, and iPad (let's call them "real" HDR devices with 1000 peak nits), it looks dreadful on lesser HDR devices like my LG B9 which is only at most 400 nits. So I'll probably settle at say 300 nits for this next time, but most people I think are just getting the transcoded SDR Rec.709 output). See https://tongfamily.com/2023/03/27/pt5-chatgpt-and-mike-conte-special-guest-and-tech-glitches-galore/ for show notes

Well in these incredibly turbulent times, what's the best way to deal with venture capitalists and other investors particularly if you are early stage? In places like Europe there is a real zone between $50K and $1M that is hard to cross, so should you spray and pray or be more targeted? Well, who knows what the right answer is, but there are probably too.

Answer the basic questions in your presentations and you can use the Sequoia template as an example. See https://perfectpitchdeck.com/2018/01/30/sequoia-capital-pitch-deck-template

But the harder part is realizing that you are not trying to sell an investor but asking, "What does the customer want to buy?" In that way, this is no different than any marketing exercise.  I can't find the exact quote anymore, but Peter Drucker the father of modern marketing did say, Markeint does not ask, "what do want to sell?" It asks, "what does the customers want to buy".  So when you are meeting an investor that's the key question.

The good news is that the investor unlike almost any other customer is completely activated, they want to buy your product, and you just have to find out what's in the way. The easiest way to do it is just to ask them. So for instance, if you have a construction tech company, just ask, "so what do you think about construction tech, is it a good category?" And you will be amazed at what they will tell you. Don't ignore it, make their points the crux of your pitch. There will be lots of objections and the mark of a good plan is that you've thought the same things, so what are you doing about it?

Show notes at https://tongfamily.com/2023/03/10/dt2-fueling-your-startup-with-great-investors/

Welcome to the February 6 episode of Rich's Tongfamily Tips, Tricks and Traps in Technology. You can always see the written posts on https://tongfamily.com, but included here are: