I believe a great
product in this area is certainly possible and Karpathy probably has the technical chops to create it.
I'm skeptical that the product described in the announcement will result in a business able to generate VC-level returns. Based on my experience as a tech entrepreneur with edu-focused products across multiple startups and decades, scaling sales revenue to significant levels in edu is extremely challenging for unique and non-obvious reasons. None of the edu-specific challenges are directly related to the effectiveness or relative value of the product itself. They are structural problems related to the three main types of buyers, which are: 1. Schools, (K-12, Univ), 2. Companies (employee training, compliance, etc), 3. Individuals (self-learners). There are other types of buyers but they don't represent nearly as much aggregated potential revenue as these three. Note that these are the economic buyers not the product end-users.
Each of the three types presents different challenges from the others, however there recurring meta-themes. The main one is that their purchasing decisions are often driven by factors unrelated to the product. For example, the primary focus of schools is, sadly, not maximizing net student learning. While that is a consideration, it's swamped by other external requirements, many of them wickedly complex. For companies, employee training, whether a regulatory requirement or purely to increase employee effectiveness, isn't core to their actual business - meaning it's a cost not revenue. Individuals on the other hand break into two types, those doing it to actually learn something for themselves, and those seeking certification or external validation like a degree to increase their future employment earnings. Learning lovers are a pure consumer, non-essential, discretionary spending-type sale with all the same well-known LTV and customer acquisition cost challenges. For certification/validation buyers, they aren't primarily focused on the learning but rather checking a particular box that has high perceived value to external parties.
While I agree that creating a new large and growing type of customer in addition to these three is possible, it's a huge lift that's risky, expensive and will require substantial sustained investment over time - all ahead of meaningful revenue. So, I wish Andrej et al the best and I'm rooting for them but I'm not optimistic they'll build a high-growth, high-revenue sustainable edu business around AI as the primary value differentiation.
I'm skeptical that the product described in the announcement will result in a business able to generate VC-level returns. Based on my experience as a tech entrepreneur with edu-focused products across multiple startups and decades, scaling sales revenue to significant levels in edu is extremely challenging for unique and non-obvious reasons. None of the edu-specific challenges are directly related to the effectiveness or relative value of the product itself. They are structural problems related to the three main types of buyers, which are: 1. Schools, (K-12, Univ), 2. Companies (employee training, compliance, etc), 3. Individuals (self-learners). There are other types of buyers but they don't represent nearly as much aggregated potential revenue as these three. Note that these are the economic buyers not the product end-users.
Each of the three types presents different challenges from the others, however there recurring meta-themes. The main one is that their purchasing decisions are often driven by factors unrelated to the product. For example, the primary focus of schools is, sadly, not maximizing net student learning. While that is a consideration, it's swamped by other external requirements, many of them wickedly complex. For companies, employee training, whether a regulatory requirement or purely to increase employee effectiveness, isn't core to their actual business - meaning it's a cost not revenue. Individuals on the other hand break into two types, those doing it to actually learn something for themselves, and those seeking certification or external validation like a degree to increase their future employment earnings. Learning lovers are a pure consumer, non-essential, discretionary spending-type sale with all the same well-known LTV and customer acquisition cost challenges. For certification/validation buyers, they aren't primarily focused on the learning but rather checking a particular box that has high perceived value to external parties.
While I agree that creating a new large and growing type of customer in addition to these three is possible, it's a huge lift that's risky, expensive and will require substantial sustained investment over time - all ahead of meaningful revenue. So, I wish Andrej et al the best and I'm rooting for them but I'm not optimistic they'll build a high-growth, high-revenue sustainable edu business around AI as the primary value differentiation.