All The Lonely People

Where did AI friendship go wrong? And the voter poll results.

Author

Adam Hardej
July 31, 2024

Couple of headlines this week in the world of AI that are top of mind for me: 1. Apple is rolling out AI this fall. 2. A startup that spent $2m buying Friend.com is betting on AI companionship. Some thoughts on those and links to great Sandhill content below including my interview with Tyson from Notice.co who i always love connecting with on all things private markets.

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With AI we won’t even need to have human friends at all!

Rarely do I feel more like a boomer than when I talk about AI friendship. Before I get into that - quick thoughts on the Apple AI release schedule:

Word is that they will be rolling out the first update that implements their OpenAI/ChatGPT partnership this Fall. After a lot of whining from everyone on how slow Apple was moving on AI (I contributed) - it’s started to look like they played the whole thing pretty well. They let someone else build it. They waited for some of the kinks to get ironed out. They’re giving everyone the “smarter siri” we all wanted from the beginning. They’re still the most valuable company in the world… Pretty crazy how deep the hardware moat is there.

On the AI friendship side - it feels like we’re asking for trouble. The movie “Her” didn’t end with a happy Joaquin Phoenix. Tech is moving fast but we still have caveman brains that craze things like pheromones and physical touch. I think it will be popular, but I don’t think it will be healthy. Like sugar or social media. I think that’s actually a pretty widely discussed topic so I’ll take it in a different direction to keep things interesting:

Similar to sugar - tech like Friend’s AI companion feels like something that will end up preying on the lower end of the economic spectrum. Maybe AI will become a leading companionship choice, but not for rich people. Rich people will have real friends in real life in real places. If they don’t have that, they will spend time and money to seek those things out. But that sounds expensive. Why not just pay $99 per month to solve your loneliness problem? That will work right?

This may gain steam for a while, but in the long run I hope people will rebel against their relationship with technology in favor of more organic happiness. The whole thing reminds me of a line from Nat Friedman’s personal site:

“You should probably work on raising the ceiling, not the floor”

This doesn’t feel like it’s raising the ceiling on human experiences. It feels like it’s selling a questionable solution to lonely people on the floor.

And of course - here are the poll results from the “Distractible Tech Bros For Trump” post last week:

Who are you voting for?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Trump (67)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Kamala (94)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️ Literally anyone besides Trump (88)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Undecided (27)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other? (24)

This generally lines up with what I expected.

Is this what you expected from the voter poll?

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Sandhill Exclusive Content 

New Podcast Drop 👇

Private Markets and Free Data w/ Notice Founder Tyson Henricksen

A little background:

  • Tyson is the founder and CEO of Notice, an investment platform that gives customers real-time access to private company data. He has an impressively diverse entrepreneurial background, including founding Affinity Circle, a professional networking and job-finding platform, a software consulting business, and even a pineapple farm in Uganda.

  • He then became a partner at Fideras, a late-stage boutique investment advisory firm that specializes in shareholder liquidity and capital raises.

  • While at Fideras, he realized the massive pricing inefficiencies of privately held companies and set out to build a solution. Notice’s team has already grown to ~8 people, and the company has chosen to build their team remotely for greater employee flexibility and broaden their access to talent.

From the Archive: The State Of European Venture

​​Looking to invest in Europe but not sure to start?Check out our recording from last month. The following three guest broke down the state of investing in Europe:

David Peterson, Partner at Angular Ventures: David invests in early-stage B2B and deep tech startups in Europe and Israel. Angular is a leading seed firm in Europe with a $40M fund 1 and $80M fund 2.

Thomas Kristensen, Partner at LGT Capital Partners: Thomas runs the venture group at LGT where he is an LP in many of the top funds across Europe. LGT is privately owned by the Princely Family of Liechtenstein. It's a leader global leader in alternative investing with $100B+ AUM.

Akhil Chainwala, Investment Director at Kinnevik: Akhil invests in growth stage technology companies across software, health care, marketplaces and climate at Kinnevik. Kinnevik is Europe's largest publicly listed investment firm with $5B in net asset value. It was founded in Sweden in 1936.

Talk soon,
Adam

PS - Are you an accredited investor? Click here to apply to our syndicate.