You think that developers today are using AI in the previous generation of software development that they've been used to. Yes. Um, and so you you use this phrase, the AI horseless carriage.Maybe tell tell us what you mean by that. This is a reference to early automobile designs that looked a lot like carriages with the horse replaced with an engine, right. And there were all sorts of problems with that design.Yeah. And this phenomena we we see over and over and over again in technology like some some ones ...

Company Overview - Replicate 是一家在技术发展初期坚持下来的公司 [1] - 公司在疫情期间曾暂停运营数月，后重新启动并默默发展了两年 [2] - 图像扩散模型出现后，公司业务迅速爆发 [2] Business Development - Replicate 在默默无闻中构建产品两年，直到图像扩散模型出现才迎来爆发 [2]

Prompt Engineering & Metaprompting - Metaprompting is emerging as a powerful tool, likened to coding in 1995 due to the evolving nature of the tools [1] - The best prompts often start by defining the role of the LLM, detailing the task, and outlining a step-by-step plan, often using markdown-style formatting [1] - Vertical AI agent companies are exploring how to balance flexibility for customer-specific logic with maintaining a general-purpose product, considering forking and merging prompts [1] - An emerging architecture involves defining a system prompt (company API), a developer prompt (customer-specific context), and a user prompt (end-user input) [1] - Worked examples are crucial for improving output quality, and automating the process of extracting and ingesting these examples from customer data is a valuable opportunity [2] - Prompt folding allows a prompt to dynamically generate better versions of itself by feeding it examples where it failed [2] - When LLMs lack sufficient information, it's important to provide them with an "escape hatch" to avoid hallucinations, either by allowing them to ask for more information or by providing debug info in the response [2] Evaluation & Model Personalities - Evals are considered the "crown jewels" for AI companies, essential for understanding why a prompt was written a certain way and for improving it [3] - Different LLMs exhibit distinct personalities; for example, Claude is considered more steerable, while Llama 4 requires more steering and prompting [5] - When using LLMs to generate numerical scores, providing rubrics is best practice, but models may interpret and apply these rubrics with varying degrees of rigidity and flexibility [5] Founder Role & Forward Deployed Engineer - Founders need to deeply understand their users and codify these insights into specific evals to ensure the software works for them [3] - Founders should act as "forward deployed engineers," directly engaging with users to understand their needs and rapidly iterate on the product [4] - The forward deployed engineer model, combined with AI, enables faster iteration and closing of significant deals with large enterprises [5]

Back in the pre-AI era, it was really hard to come up with good new startup ideas because the idea space had been picked over for like 20 years. And so a lot of the the startup advice that people would hear would be like you really need to like sell before you build. It was like the lean startup scale fast scale fast.But I would argue that in this new AI era that the right mental model is closer to what hard set which is just like use interesting technology, follow your own curiosity, figure out what's poss ...

AI Development & Application - The industry is currently using outdated software development techniques for AI features, hindering the full potential of AI, which should enable users to program software using natural language [1][18] - AI application development is often approached by trying to fit AI into existing applications, rather than redesigning tools from the ground up to automate repetitive tasks [18][62] - The industry needs to move beyond the chatbot paradigm and focus on AI's capability to automate work and accomplish tasks on behalf of users [58][60] - A key element is providing users with "tools" that agents can use to accomplish tasks, such as labeling emails, archiving them, or writing drafts [53][54] System Prompts & User Control - Current AI applications often hide the "system prompt" (instructions given to the AI) from the user, limiting customization and personalization [1][11] - The industry should allow users to view and edit system prompts, enabling them to tailor the AI's behavior to their specific needs and preferences [8][10] - Allowing users to control system prompts shifts the responsibility for the AI's output from the developer to the user [35] - While not everyone may want to write system prompts from scratch, the option should be available, and AI could assist in generating and customizing prompts based on user history and feedback [41][42][48] Future of AI Development - The industry needs to develop better tooling and UI conventions for interacting with and teaching AI, potentially including AI-assisted system prompt writers [45][46] - AI models are good at processing instructions and turning them into text output, making them particularly effective for coding agents [31][32] - Founders should rethink existing tools from the ground up with AI, focusing on offloading repetitive work from users [61][62]

Most humans are not rational about their finances. Questions like how much should I save for the future. Where should I invest my money to take the right risk for me.And how should I think about debt and taxes. How you answer these questions today will impact your freedom to do the things you want in the future. Until today, the way to answer these questions have been asking friends, Googling, sometimes hiring a financial adviser, or maybe even asking your bank.These options aren't great. They're filled wit ...

Voice Assistant Opportunity - The industry sees potential in voice-based email management, especially during commute times like a 20-minute drive, aiming for inbox zero upon arrival at work [1] - The industry recognizes the broader use cases of voice agents beyond driving, highlighting their current capabilities demonstrated by existing technologies [1] - The industry acknowledges the limitations of keyboard reliance, particularly for individuals with physical impairments, suggesting email as a prime area for voice assistant development [2] Email as a Central Hub - Email inboxes contain a wealth of personal information, including contacts, plans, and writing styles, making them ideal for building comprehensive personal assistants [2] Call to Action - The company is seeking teams to develop voice-based email processing solutions [1][2]

software engineering jobs of today I think will not exist in five or 10 years. I think there will be demand for smart people who know how to wrangle these AI coding machines and if we want to call those people software engineers like so be it but I think the job is dramatically dramatically different. I think what's interesting here people have strong reactions when they think oh the job that I do or my friends do might go away.It's a very scary proposition, but if you look backwards at history, the first c ...

At YC, we want to fund more AI research labs. Many people don't realize this, but YC was the first investor in Open AI. In fact, OpenAI began life as YC research, our in-house research lab.OpenAI pioneered the concept of independent AI research labs, and we have had a front row seat to the entire journey. While OpenAI is doing incredible work, there are many unsolved problems in AI and still plenty of opportunity for new research labs. Sometimes people think that to do YC you have to be able to ship a produ ...

Soon, all companies will have one thing in common. Every employee will build their own agents to automate the repetitive parts of their jobs. We'd like to fund founders working on the infrastructure they'll use to do that.Internal agent builders. An internal agent builder is a tool that I can use to create an agent to handle mundane tasks I don't like doing. This infrastructure will need to access every other piece of software I use in my day-to-day.It'll need to manage permissions and send sensitive data s ...