a3d

finally information is breaking out on whats happening to my lot - i am 49 had 10 yrs plus at faang early career, solid career progression later - cto for 2 series c startups 2 yr stint and i am not able to find anything 2 yrs and counting. this year is dead ~ cant even get a loop, my career is done for. From claude's launches in jan feb this year to oct world changed - now i am facing fact that i am forced to retire and will not find job i like - i am not fire type - i want to work - i still need some buffer for retirement that was to come from 5 yrs working and its gone. Every other person i know in similar boat says they are starting a startup - rarely i see one that is getting traction - most are just trying any random product - nothing unique or they are simply lost.

I like something here. The interactive - incremental steps of learning or teaching. But having to go through sort of quizes to just get info I need - may not be best for all use cases.

There is a reason chat bots work - it mimics natural human interaction.

But this can be interest pattern - for say AI driven personal tutor for math topic

Lastly - for love of god - pls do something with the UI - all colors and bubbles and I am totally lost just trying to make sense of what is going on. Look at reditt if you just want back and forth thread convo style. Life is simpler that way.

Ah forgot to mention - and I infringe on copyrights - some people's hard earned work (try writing a book that goes viral dear LLM - it ain't easy as you think) - hide it under the guise of open internet that never was!

Pass - nothing ground breaking here. Just another pirate trying pass on as legit coolster!

"andsoitis" added 36 points to get on top of the charts, Some deeper links seem broken - I suspect this is old website

Fractals are old folly, patterns of nature - wonder if there are active use cases to represent data in some form of fractal models

Good devs with good communication == Better then PM

Dev + Business = speed and customer centric

Dev + PM + Business = one more layer, i.e. slow, i.e. some loss of customer voice

I worked at Amazon as dev for 10 yrs. In early days 2001+. Amazon did not hire PMs then. Best of Amazon exp came out in that period. I was part of that myself. Pm is needed for things like building amazon prime. If at all.

I am myself somewhat formulating a view and I still think many of YC fundamentals still very much apply - so below thoughts may not be well-formed - please read at your own risk.

The backbone of years of manufacturing from shenzhen belt in itself is becoming a moat. For example - I was literally talking to a fast fashion seller with a few shops in seoul yesterday - historically - korea has had edge on design lines to adopt and produce fast fashion from NY/EU creative trends and then manufacture in vietnam/banglafdesh etc - he is just starting to shift some of his buying to China. Their work is now better quality and more so it is cheaper - in vietnam I also saw a fashion retailer going ga ga over quality of men belts he is sourcing from china and now cost is lower - earlier only luxury retailers types had access to such stuff from China - weak IP/copy/ better-trained workforce is making luxury produce more easy to produce may be. Cross border/brand less might be next frontier in ecom here.

The spending and capital power of giants such as Ali/Tencent is becoming a moat. These giants got huge with breaking out market but now they are something like a governopoly working closely with policy makers for china vision.

All of this is affecting SE asia and now even India. In nutshell - below might be different now for starting a company:

1) Being first and just being there might matter more - product-market fit can be weak? because you are dealing with a customer base that is just coming mobile and is much less sophisticated - they will still be ok with your service with some compromise - this is fundamentally against what I have known all my life! - in long term I bet good old best CX matters - but for immature markets not so much right now

2) Being first in small market / being market maker: great if you can do this but this is not needed in Asian context. There is enough size and potential growth coming that just building in the existing big market verticals is ok - you have an opportunity to differentiate by having stronger talent and actually improving existing experience if you can start with a smaller category or segment - ok to go head on with existing players - may be same thing YC says but I word differently

3) Talent is sparse - so you have lots of avg. stuff built and then iterated - this can be your secret advantage even more so here - you can do same thing but bit faster and at better quality

I have think more about this to be more constructive. These are some of my early thoughts and I again - I just hope to share and exchange what I know. I may be wrong and hey that is ok!

Thanks - here is another one that I have discovered. I have no idea who these people are but they seem to bring good insight from China. https://kr-asia.com/

https://technode.com/ also useful sometimes

Another one - mostly shallow grapevine with SE Asia view https://thelowdown.momentum.asia/ - probably many such exist

I have no affiliation with any of above. Thanks to google - I keep hitting these more than others.