Welcome to the Newcomer podcast. I'm Eric, Newcomer.
And I'm Madeline Renbarger. Each week, Eric and I discuss
the VC deals and the drama that went down.
Let's do it. Here we go.
Oh, a loyal supporter. Of the newcomer podcast, I, I
think our first advertiser and Christina the CEO has been on
the show anyway. Without further ado.
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$1000 off. Eric, how is your vibe coding
going? Well, first of all, you know
Guillermo, the CEO of Versal, having lunch with him at Human
X, you know, it's like, oh, you could build everything in VO,
their coders. So I started there.
Honestly, I got stuck in VO. What was the problem?
It was like some button, you know, it was just like, make the
button work, you know, And it's like I was like start over.
I, I don't know, I, I just like got stuck.
I moved to lovable. The buzziest company of the hour
right now. On on the wing list we just
published and very buzzy company that did the best.
Honestly. Spoiler alert so far I have had
the most success with lovable, you know and, and for the
viewer, what listener I I don't know how to code at all like I,
I don't know anything When I went to college, I studied
philosophy, I was into journalism.
I had no idea that I would be covering tech ever did not even
cross my mind yeah. I did not take CS anyway, so
know nothing about coding, but lovable, you know, created
uploaded our design elements like our logo and so it borrowed
our green and made really a nice website.
You know, it's all the front end.
I don't want to say exactly what I'm trying to build because it
is a real product that I would be excited about, but the front
end sort of exists. There are still some buttons
that don't do exactly what I want, but I was able to add sort
of user comments and annotations and cool.
So that was actually pretty amazing.
So lovable was my like Oh my God, like this is magical.
Have you played with any of the others?
Have you touched Windsurf or any of these guys?
I've not done Codium's windsurf, though I should, and I haven't
done cursor, which honestly I feel like is maybe the elephant
in the room I. Was gonna say if you're gonna do
one it feels like you should do cursor.
My sense of cursor was that, you know, it's used more by coders
where lovable is used by, you know, plain text.
I went to Claude code anthropics product, which is insane in that
like you use the terminal of your computer.
So you're like using like command lines on your Mac, which
I doesn't seem good opsec, but I have like anthropic over total
access to my computer and it's much more autonomous like you
describe and text what you want. I was joking on Twitter that,
you know, coding with Claude code is just like hitting one.
Music keeps asking me like, do you want me to do this thing?
It's like one, yes. And then going to Claude Online
just to sort of like, well, Claude code's asking me this,
like, what do you think you know?
And so you're just sort of like facilitating a conversation
between two bots. I did end up with a locally
hosted design website. Can't remember if buttons
worked. The design was way worse but it
did feel insane in terms of the vibe.
You did that all based on just plain English prompting, so you
can build a lot with just that. That is impressive.
Lovable was easier to like both lovable and VO.
I think you're like ripping, you know, I take a screenshot of
some stuff, you know, it's like do do something like this, you
know. So there's definitely a risk
that it's a little derivative, but you move fast from an image.
Claude code. Yeah, I was text based, all of
them. I have sort of lost team.
I mean, it took a fair bit of my time.
It sounds like the front end stuff is working really well and
from you and other people I talk to who play with it, but I
wonder, I mean, the skeptical journalist in me is always like,
if you get 80% of the way there, that's great.
But if the last point like doesn't work, is it, how amazing
is it really? It's it seems like smoke and
mirrors flashy demo day and the actual tech work still needs to
be tinkered out, which you know, we support.
Where's your read on where this actually is overall?
I mean, it it, you know, we experienced it with self driving
cars. You can feel super close and
then you're actually far away. Now self driving cars seem to
have solved that. I think we'll talk about them a
little bit more later in the show.
But for a long time it was like, oh, they're, they're nearly
here. And it's like, oh, I don't know,
getting all the little details right matters.
And with my experience, I don't even think it wasn't like an
8020 situation. I think it's more like a 2080
situation. It's like, yeah, I had the nice
design and sort of I had the concept, but no back end.
I've no idea how to like host it.
Some of the features weren't working.
That almost sounds like a competitor to like a Figma or
like a design tool rather than like coding full websites.
Yeah, well, that's why people are saying vibe coding.
Yes, I think that you understand this, but I think that's what a
lot of people aren't in it don't get.
It's like, yes, it's very compelling for the design part
of the website. So that's why it's fun with
front end. You're like, here's a
screenshot, here's some assets like play around with it.
Oh, I don't like that reshuffle it this way.
You know, that's where it's a threat to Figma because you know
it's well, you know, we're all playing around with you know
what ChatGPT just came out with, you know, on four O they're
really a Studio Ghibli machine. My Twitter feed is dominated by
Studio Ghibli images and I have to say I've been building them.
I've sent them to my wife. Oh, did you make some of you and
your wife? Chachi BT This is a real reveal
here. Red pandas are my favorite
animal. It's realized that it should
just like put red pandas, right? Some of these images, I'll like
them better. It's like, oh, here's a family
portrait and a red panda is in it.
You know which. It's learning so much about you.
Eric Yeah, exactly. I love it.
Which is what I want. I'm always shouting at it.
Remember Me? We've talked many times before.
Uses the context. All my things I've asked you and
uploaded. This is the dream, you know?
We just get pandered to. Have you played with it yet?
I've played a little bit with it.
I'm more experienced with some of the older image generators.
I was a really big fan of when like Dolly first launched.
I I spent like days on that just prompting it with the most
random crap. I think I did like any of the
memes with like trail Cam footage of someone in the woods
and make everything look like a grainy picture when that
actually became visible. So this I need to still play
with. You're like, I have to file my
draft. I don't know what I'm writing.
I wrote a piece earlier this week.
You know, I get to play around, make little images for work.
The beauty of covering AI. I do since I've been kind of
spoiler alert for little future work talking to some people in
the legal tech world. Recently all of his image stuff
has been making me think a lot about copyright laws.
Are we just throwing those out at this point?
Like the the Studio Ghibli stuff is very clearly Studio Ghibli
style. And literally the CEO, Sam
Altman is tweeting out like images of him in Studio Ghibli
profile. Picture Ghibli Altman.
Right. Do they have a deal?
I assume not. No, I can't imagine.
Also, yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't remember Miyazaki being
particularly pro this kind of stuff.
Anyway, it's very fun, but then it opens up this whole host of
defensibility from like a business perspective.
Do you think it is a legal loser or like you know, there's no law
anymore and it's only power? I think it's great.
I kind of am feeling like that's the direction we're going.
I mean, Grok was the first to have the image generator.
That was no regard for copyright at all.
And for the most part, opening eyes still on paper looking to
do that, there's workarounds and you know how to prompt it to get
it to generate the style so it's easy to work around.
But at least on paper, they have their lawyers saying, you know,
you can't do this this way, but I don't know if that's going to
hold. Imagine you're an artist and you
have this genius style. I wouldn't want every Joe Schmo
to be able to copy it. I mean, it's like, it's one
thing if talented artists can sort of pay homage to it, but of
course they've learned to paint or draw and so now they have
some skill and so maybe they try to be creative themselves.
You know, this is the ultimate couldn't be more derivative.
And even though it's fun, you know, for everybody to be able
to do their family because you're not going to be able to
hire the artist to do it for you.
It's just clearly is going to dilute the artistic style.
So putting aside the law, it's just sort of, you know, it's
happy and sad I'm doing it, but you know, I wouldn't want to
have an iconic art style right now because it's going to get
copied. Madeline, what's your forecast
on copyright? They're wild now as they're
acquiring customers and they'll get more buttoned up.
Or you think this is the new normal?
I think that we're still in the early days of adoption.
Like as much as this feels ubiquitous to us being really in
this ecosystem, not everywhere has really taken advantage of
this. Just speaking also with my
lawyer mother that I keep referencing on this podcast,
it's they're very cautious about how to implement this kind of
stuff. And so the sort of like 20%
early adopters to 80% mass thing is really real with this.
I can tell in a lot of industries and circling back to
copyright, a lot of people are very nervous about this and
don't want this to get them in trouble.
So I don't think it's a total free for all yet.
Long term, will it be? That's something that's I think
certainly going to have to be renegotiated, yes.
But for the immediate time right now, I think people are at least
in the content space or a little bit wary of doing this as
directly. It's bleeding over more now than
it was before. Like I think I don't think Sam
Watlin would have used copyright style images.
What's funny that it's like the media channels.
If you're like NBC, you're surely paranoid about ripping
off somebody's art style. But open AI, which is definitely
more valuable than NBC, it's like, oh, the old guard
companies that are responsible but not as valuable are more
cautious than the startup worth, you know, 300 billion.
I don't know. It's it's classic.
Moving on, different drama, different day. 11X this sales
automation AI startup backed by Andreessen and Benchmarks.
So some pretty happy hitters was accused of falsely claiming
certain companies as its customers.
Eric, what do you make of this? I think short term customers who
turned off but were still advertised as customers on the
website maybe. I think some annual ARR.
I don't know if it was recurring revenue or runway in revenue,
but ARR maybe inflated potentially.
But the really charged idea at the top of the story was that
Andreessen Horowitz was going to perhaps mulling suing the
startup. They backed 11X dot AI.
And just like knowing anything about Andreessen, you need to
have that like lock solid, I think to lead off the story
saying that Andreessen's gonna sue the start up.
I mean, Andreessen came out defending the start up and Sarah
Tovill and Benchmark did. And you know, they're not as
hostile to the media. And so I feel like it was a very
predictable as soon as it came out, like, oh, people are
talking about whether Andreessen might sue.
The other thing that was obvious in the story is like, clearly
they are there are a lot of angry former employees.
Like, you know, I think there was some picture in the story
and it's like everybody in this picture is gone besides the
founder. And as someone who has written
about these types of companies, I mean, it is employees can get
themselves incredulous that like, wow, we all left and like
it's clearly a disaster, not going to work.
Sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong, and
clearly, you know, VC's back the founder, especially Andreess.
Yeah, the VC's are doubling down.
Do you think churn like that at a startup like this that's super
fast growing is like an immediate red flag?
I mean, based on your history of reporting, I feel like it really
depends if there's something fraudulent going on for that's
obviously sketchy. But with this, it just seems
like maybe not quite to that tier.
It's hard. It's hard to know, you know, the
business person and me. Churn is bad.
Obviously, it makes it very hard to keep growing if you have to
replace all your old customers. But if you're sort of early on
and figuring out what works, you're obviously going to churn
out customers who weren't the right fit for you.
So it's hard to know, just like churn on its own.
Yeah. I mean, the issue is that it was
easy for people to abandon. They had sort of a loose brake
clause, but then they baked in those customers to their ARR,
you know. But again, this is sort of the
type of type of thing which is why we have staged venture
capital funding. It's like if you if you sort of
fake the AR today and those people churn, unless you're
really pushing it, you're going to have trouble the next round.
So I think a lot of VCs are just sort of this is the process.
Why? Why write an expose on a Series
B company? Well, also a lot of these even
really these early AI startups, there's been a ton of reporting
about how a lot of customers for these early AI startups have a
lot of customer entrance and then a lot of churn, but then
still rate retain a lot of customer interest.
Like it's not like these companies are failing these,
these are still backing them and they're growing.
It's just like a high. It seems like a lot of these
companies just have higher turnover than maybe traditional
SAS companies did at this time. If you need fewer employees, you
you can churn the ones that are annoying to you as a CEO.
I guess I don't know a couple wild tweets that I would never
put in a story, but in a podcast I can read to you one from, you
know, a non account basically is like the fake revenue expose has
begun. Theranos will be forgotten.
Long live the AI sales agent. Next is Mercor, then scale
perplexity, open AI mean that's bombastic.
But I do think there's like, we don't know anything about, you
know, the nature of this revenue.
But Arthur Rock, who has a track record of good reporting, said
an AI company with a similar quote revenue trajectory likes
to include early equity raise as part of their ARR calculation.
Raised 20 million so far and is quite literally everywhere.
I'm pretty sure none of its investors are aware of this good
litmus test on who is doing most basic DD due diligence.
Clearly. I mean, money's flying and there
are going to be some startups that do shady things and
inflating revenue could be one of them.
I think TechCrunch needed to be more buttoned up here about
having this lawsuit idea at the top of their story when they had
other interesting claims that they could have focused on.
Regardless, this is a TechCrunch story that drums up a ton of
media attention and hits just a week after their big sale, which
had a lot of people scratching their heads as to what that
means. Yeah, I'm interested to see.
Obviously TechCrunch has been an institution.
I think selling to private equity does not make people more
optimistic about the fate of a beloved brand.
But you know, Apollo owned Yahoo which owned TechCrunch.
So one to another we'll we'll see.
Hopefully they figure it out. I said earlier that we might
come back to self driving cars. It is now the time to do so.
Waymo, my my favorite dear, near and dear to my heart way MO's
planned robo taxi launch in Washington, DC intends to
introduce by 2026. I mean, what is, is DC going to
be part of the Trump federal administration by then?
I don't know what'll be a separate city.
I don't know. But but anyway, they they want
to go to DC. What do you think, Madeline?
I think this is cool. Of course, the launch is
dependent on if they can change some local laws that currently
require human drivers in autonomous vehicles.
So obviously they're going to be pushing for that so that it does
go through. I think that DC as a
neighborhood makes a lot of sense for Way MO.
It's a bigger city, obviously it's nation's capital.
The access of power is Silicon Valley moves closer in you know
maybe probably good call there, but I also think it's just
exciting to see self driving cars in growing cities one step
closer to getting to New York City.
Am I right I. Was reading something.
I worry that New York is going to be a particular particularly
big hurdle. Taxi cabs are powerful and
highly regulated. Also the just the the culture of
jaywalking and the chaos of New York streets I feel like is
something to consider too not to be.
You're buying car propaganda there.
This is why it's self driving cars.
They're much better. I I was looking at analysis by
Timothy Lee. He analyzed the 38 most serious
crashes Waymo experience between July 2024 and February 20, 2516.
Crashes where another vehicle crashed into a stationary way
MO. I think the only ones where way
MO is sort of responsible are passengers getting out and like
during like a bicyclist or something.
OK, for sure. Again, also human error.
In a certain way, though, a product design, I think Waymo's
trying to warn people when people are coming.
But anyway, by by any standard there, he's he he predicts that
there would have been way more incidents with human drivers.
I mean, I think it's pretty clear at this point that Waymo
is superior. I think you'd be right in them.
You're like, yeah, this is definitely safer.
So if you want to protect pedestrians in the streets of
New York, we need Waymo. That's our show.
Thanks for listening. See you next week.