DoingSomeThings

Maybe you've done this yourself. I'm honestly jealous if solving customer support was as easy as your describe.

In my case, I've spent the past 12 months running implementations at multiple companies. I've engaged directly with smart engineering teams to assist. It was not that easy.

What you outlined might work for a simple ecom business. It probably does 95% of the job for a simple case where you're delivering information. But it will fail the second it needs to take action or deliver personalized information based on client's account data.

That leads to the exact issue people here complain about... an LLM that doesn't actually answer the question, can't solve the problem, and is worse than talking to a human

"Paying Fin $250k flat does nothing since it isn't going to actually know how to solve problems. The real challenge is the knowledge and context engineering and Fin doesn't help there"

You misunderstand the model. Fin does not have flat fee. They charge exclusively for resolutions. That's the entire value prop.

Correct that knowledge and context engineering are the key. Fin DOES help here. They have an entire backend suite to help you build out areas where Fin is failing. It shows you questions it couldn't resolve, looks at the answers your human team gave, and suggests updates to help articles to

You're correct this could all be build by a skilled engineer, but that's not the point. It's built for non-techincal users to use and implement. A person who rose through the support ranks and shows some technical competency can learn the system without any software knowledge.

"The 3 common issues used to be solved by a manual with an FAQ page, or just you know, actually intuitive and usable software and hardware."

Having led customer support, this grossly misunderstands how people interact. People don't read. It's as simple as that. You can write something as clear as day in a FAQ, and they don't want to put in the effort. ~50% of the inbounds I receive are fully written out in plain language in an FAQ.

LLMs are perfect for this scenario. It puts the answer in clear english and will endlessly re-word the answer when clients followup.

This is disappointing. I've worked closely with Intercom for the past few years. I've run Fin implementations at multiple companies. I've found their product team incredibly strong & the product to be customer friendly. Salesforce... not so much.

imo - Fin's AI chat is the best on the backend of empowering teams to self-serve & integrate with Helpdesk. They don't require consultants.

I really hope they don't lose all of that in this acquisition.

I was looking for a discussion on this book.

Was a fascinating look into how different college experiences can be, how insular the venture ecosystem seems, and the gross efforts powerful people make to keep that power. I’d love to know how true to life the undergrad->tech power pipeline is.

I’ve never lived in CA, worked for a unicorn or big tech. Didn’t go to an Ivy. I took the route of state school to startups in second tier markets. I’d never heard of VC until a few years into career. Hard to fathom how different the Stanford experience is, as described.

I walked away from the book feeling jaded. It makes everything about career and company success feel dirty in a manner I’ve never experienced first hand.

A few personal examples from my 400 book history:

Reader Summary: You are a walking existential crisis who oscillates between trying to save your soul with 13th-century Catholic theology and escaping reality via magic-system spreadsheets. Your reading list is essentially a debate between a Trappist monk and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, and somehow, they're both currently losing to a talking cat in a death dungeon.

Information Diet: Your media consumption suggests a high-low split. You balance dense, slow-burn philosophy (Josef Pieper) with high-octane, 'popcorn' entertainment (Dungeon Crawler Carl), intentionally using fiction as an escape from heavy systemic analysis.

Life Arc: Your life trajectory appears to be a journey from 'Enchanted Orthodoxy' to 'Humanistic Meaning. You moved from preparing for the priesthood/ministry to a deconstruction of faith, eventually landing in a space of 'Conscious Leadership' and secular contemplative practice.

This is a frustrating article. To pick one example:

"The most damning aspect is not their exploitation of loopholes or their willingness to combine dangerous drug cocktails or even their reliance on unvetted Chinese suppliers..."

"unvetted" is doing a lot of work here. There's no evidence provided for this claim of working with shady sources and doing no diligence on the products they are selling. I know that to be false from first-hand connections in the telehealth space.

Hims works with 503B pharmacies. They are FDA inspected. They run batch testing on their source material and require strict compliance. All safe, legal, vetted pathways.

It's bizarre to me that the author is linking Novo Nordisk newswire press releases as sources of truth but is unwilling to to do basic research on how Hims operates. NN is hardly a faultless player here. They're selling this medicine for $1k+ per month!

Separately -- Algorithmic care is fine because most decisions are algorithmic. It's no different than what you receive from the 5-minute dr visit in person.

In a perfect world we'd have primary care doctors to coordinate care, direct you to the perfect pharmacy for each medicine you need, etc. In our real world, convenience and access are a good things. The shift from "patient" to DTC "client" is a net win for the public.

I felt an immediate, physical relief when I hit the credits screen.

Fantastic landing page!

Related thought - Is there a good way to search for projects like this? I know there are hundreds of these passion projects that never show up in google.

Ex) This year I want to get better at playing piano. Reddit and google bring up a few consistent big name links. I'd love to support a well-produced course by a creator like this, but have no idea how to find it.

The video game example resonates. I realized recently that I load up walkthroughs by default. Before I’ve even turned the game on, I’m already following someone else’s ideas of best practice.

I think it comes from a misplaced belief about saving time and optimizing for “best” solutions. Taking a less optimal path is scary, even in a game with 0 real world consequences. I’ll consider that next time.

CICO is the mechanical answer. The question OP is getting at is "why" they naturally eat less. The poster is saying "I eat until I'm full and don't gain weight". For other people, they eat until they're full and gain weight.

Personally, my "satiated" level is very low. When trying to gain weight while weightlifting, it was difficult to eat the amount of calories needed. I know others who can easily eat twice as much as me in a sitting and not feel full. Something different in happening in our bodies to signal "stop".

I love this idea. My high school our english program had us write letters to ourself 10 years in the future. Such a joyous surprise when that teacher actually sent the letters 10 years later.

I wonder though - How is this different than journaling? Doesn't a written record from the past you can refer back to in the future accomplish the same goal?