The Death of A 1000 Startups

My favorite book on business and entrepreneurship is called “Unscripted” - by MJ De Marco. In that book, he tells people to build their businesses on the CENTS principle.

I won’t bother you with the entire explanation, but the C stands for “Control””.

“Do not build a business where you are at the mercy of entities like suppliers or platforms, which could change their terms and kill off your business.”

Do not start an Amazon affiliate website because when they cut their commission rates, your business is as good as dead (which is what they did in 2021).

The same has now happened with hundreds upon hundreds of startups that were surfing the success wave that is ChatGPT. OpenAI has changed their business model, and the aftermath is not pretty.

I guess a lot of those “digital nomads” that are sitting on a beach in Bali with their expensive Macbook Pro will soon have to book a flight home back to mom’s house.

The newsletter is a little shorter than usual because of the dominance of the OpenAI event and Elon Musk’s announcement.

Enjoy !

[AI]
Elon Musk’s xAI reveals “Grok”

Elon Musk just unveiled Grok, a ‘witty and rebellious’ AI chatbot inspired by Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and named after a neologism introduced in “Stranger in a Strange Land” , a science fiction novel by Robert Heinlein. Grok was created by his company, xAI and designed as a competitor to ChatGPT.

The details:

• Grok was trained over just a two-month period and is intended to be witty and uncensored, with both ‘normal’ and ‘fun’ modes. That also sounds very annoying, to be honest.

• The core AI engine is called Grok-1, which xAI claims surpasses GPT-3.5 on certain benchmarks but currently lags behind GPT-4.

• Grok has access to real-time posts on X, allowing it to converse about current events—and will eventually be released to all X Premium+ subscribers once out of beta testing.

• Users can multi-task with several chats running simultaneously and response times at’screen refresh’ speed.

• API, image, and audio recognition are planned, with a version of Grok also running natively in Teslas using local computing.

Grok's rebellious and uncensored tone is a stark contrast to ChatGPT's tightly guarded responses, and its access to the trove of Twitter data should make for an interesting (but often noisy) knowledge base. The fact that Grok was trained in just over two months shows that xAI will be a true competitive threat to OpenAI.

[AI]
The Death of a 1000 Startups

OpenAI has introduced a series of innovative updates that significantly enhance the capabilities and accessibility of its AI models.

• GPT Builder has been launched, a tool that democratizes the creation of custom AI assistants. This platform allows users to tailor their GPTs by adding complex instructions, integrating files, defining actions, and incorporating DALL-E 3 profiles.

• In tandem with the GPT Builder, OpenAI is also rolling out the GPT Store, a marketplace where individuals can monetize their custom-built GPTs.

• Accessibility to GPT Builder is currently available for ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise subscribers.

• An example of GPT Builder’s capabilities is demonstrated in an initial test where an X/Twitter post optimizer bot was created, which you can interact with.

• The newly released GPT-4 Turbo boasts an extensive 128K context window, enabling it to comprehend prompts as lengthy as a 300-page book. It offers enhanced performance, updated knowledge, and reduced costs for developers—at three times less expense.

• OpenAI has cut prices for developers with new APIs that facilitate app development using advanced vision, text-to-speech, and DALL-E 3 technologies.

• The Assistants API is another addition, designed to support the creation of goal-oriented AI apps and has been extended to include GPT-4 and custom models.

• The 'Copyright Shield' service by OpenAI aims to cover legal expenses for developers facing copyright infringement claims when using their tools.

• The newly spotted "Builder Profile" within ChatGPT hints at the upcoming GPT Builder marketplace, offering insights through early access.

The significance of these updates is clear: OpenAI continues to lead in the AI space, providing creators with a more expansive and affordable set of tools to innovate and build upon its platform.

Watch the video above for a 3 minute recap.

[Cyber]
The week in cybersecurity - Boeing suffers ransomware attack

Belgium's Standoff with a Silent Phisher: Yes! We made the international cyber headlines. Belgian authorities are putting the squeeze on a young cyber suspect, asking for a solid two years in the clink plus a daily fine of 5000€ for every day he refuses to give up his passwords.

Netherlands' Cybercrime Takedown: A 21-year-old Dutch cyber whiz, alias Umbreon, has found himself on the wrong side of the law with a four-year sentence for his lead role in a hacking spree. The story reads like a thriller - security researcher and volunteer by day - evil hacker at night.

Boeing Battles Ransomware: The “luxury parts” division of Boeing was hit by the Lockbit Ransomware gang. Boeing was quick to point out flight safety is not impacted and have not disclosed more than the fact they are “investigating”. However, from the outside it looks pretty bad. Just go to their services page (which of time of writing shows a schedule for 787 training)

Okta’s Breach Breakdown: Okta, post-cyber sleuthing, has reported that the breach it suffered touched a fraction of its customers with limited impact. The source of the breach? An employee's personal device slip-up. Okta is trying to do everything in its power to limit the damage to their brand.

Mr. Cooper’s Cyber Recovery:The biggest money lender in the US is called Mr. Cooper and Mr. Cooper had a very bad halloween night. They got hit by ransomware - so much so they had to take all their systems offline in order to rebuild everything rather than paying the ransom.

Ace Hardware's Cyber Hurdle: Another ransomware victim this week in the US was Ace Hardware, a -surprise- hardware store chain. Stores were able to stay open but the system is also being rebuilt in the background.

[Closing Thoughts]
What We Learned

Well we learned that OpenAI is tightening their grip on their business model. We also learned the real reason why Musk bought Twitter.

Until next week,

Signing off.