LLMs and the future of customer-built software design
David Peterson

Back when I started at Airtable, we provided every new employee with a reading list. Alan Kay featured heavily. As did Smalltalk and Logo. And Hypercard and VisiCalc.

The goal was indoctrination, plain and simple. And it worked! I am not (too) embarrassed to say that I remember earnestly quoting “Opening The Hood of a Word Processor” to a colleague during lunch on more than one occasion.

We were on a mission to “democratize software creation” and as Airtable’s user count reached the millions we couldn’t help but feel like we had finally cracked the code to nailing “end-user programming” for the masses.

As time has passed, however, it’s become clear to me that it will be deeply challenging for products like Airtable, Zapier or Webflow (which I’ve started calling “customer-built” products) to go truly mainstream. These products have failed to reach their full potential because ultimately they’re either too complex (serving only power users), or they end up weighed down by feature bloat (alienating new users).

With the release of GPT-4, however, I had a bit of an epiphany. I think LLMs have the potential to solve both of these problems and fundamentally change the way these sorts of products are designed. And it’s my contention that the first customer-built product to go truly mainstream (not just millions of users, but hundreds of millions) will be built with AI at its core.

Here’s my argument. I would love to hear your thoughts. And if you’re building the next, great customer-built product, let’s talk!

David

EVENTS

May 31 / US Immigration Best Practices
Jennifer Schear, Founding Partner, Schear Immigration Law Firm

FROM THE BLOG

LLMs and the Future of Customer-built Software Design
How will LLMs change software development and design?

Navigating AI’s iPhone Moment
A venture perspective on LLMs and what’s next…

Principles for AI Product Design
Or how we could all learn a little from Google’s conversion optimizer.

Has Everyone Gone Chatbot Crazy?
Large language models have taken the (tech) world by storm, and all of a sudden it’s 2016 again.

EUROPE & ISRAEL FUNDING NEWS

Germany/SW Development. Hygraph raised $30M for its next-generation content management system bringing a “federated” approach to CMS.

Germany/Automation. Parloa raised $21.7M for its workflow automation platform for contact center employees.

France/Health. Inato raised $20M to make clinical trials more efficient and inclusive.

United Kingdom/Payments. Paytrix raised $18.3M for its payment API which is used by businesses to send, receive and store payments.

Israel/IT Infrastructure. Env0 raised $18M for its Infrastructure as Code (IaC) workflow automation and management software.

Israel/Security. Spera raised $10M for its identity security posture platform.

WORTH READING

ENTERPRISE/TECH NEWS

AI on pause? ChatGPT has taken the world by storm, reaching a record-breaking 100 million users only two months after launching and causing a generative AI frenzy. However, some of the most notable people in tech, including OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, recently signed a letter calling on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” The key part of the letter states: “Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks, and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system’s potential effects.” While even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted to being afraid of the AI they’re creating and its possible ramifications, an actual pause seems rather unlikely.

SVB update. Several weeks after Silicon Valley Bank collapsed — and the collective sigh of relief when the FDIC guaranteed the deposits over $250k — First Citizens Bank has agreed to purchase SVB. Customers of SVB will automatically become customers of First Citizens and SVB branches will reopen as First Citizens branches. Regional bank stocks, like First Republic, slightly recovered on the news of the deal, reflecting an easing of investor fears around a possible banking crisis.

Marketplace 100. a16z has released their fourth annual Marketplace 100 report. The most notable takeaway: “After two years of unprecedented growth, ecommerce penetration has returned to pre-pandemic levels. However, the way we shop has changed…”

HOW TO STARTUP

Marketing org chart. Lindsay Bayuk, Pluralsight’s CMO, has spent considerable time thinking about the ideal marketing org chart. She pragmatically shares the version she’s identified as the optimal design to facilitate the most growth with the fewest people.

ICP & GTM template. Work-Bench has shared a terrific ICP definition & GTM planning template for fundraising founders.

Experiment plan template. Helpful experiment plan template, created by Ben Williams, formerly the VP PLG at Snyk.

HOW TO VENTURE

The rise of European venture. Broadhaven’s Michael Sidgmore wrote a great post on why Europe’s VC fund ecosystem is compelling. While the European startup market and talent continues to mature, it has several appealing aspects relative to the US, which Michael covers in detail. The most compelling of all: “European startups are often more capital efficient than their US counterparts. Historically, it’s taken European startups roughly 50% of the capital required to reach unicorn status.”

Series A decline. The tech downturn in 2022 was largely characterized by an IPO freeze and a dearth of VC investment in late stage startups. Late stage funding was down 26% in 2022, meanwhile it only fell 2% for early stage. However, the VC slow down may now be starting to more seriously affect the early stages. This quarter, Series A investments into US companies is on track to hit the lowest quarterly total in over two years. Per Crunchbase data, Series A investment in the US has fallen for five consecutive quarters.

PORTFOLIO NEWS

Steadybit’s CEO, Benjamin Wilms, was a guest on the latest Amazic podcast, where he discussed chaos engineering and Steadybit’s take on it.

Forter has launched a new partner program to help organizations fight fraud with their clients. Forter also recently acquired Immue Ltd., a bot detection company.