Lightcone Podcast

Y Combinator
Lightcone Podcast

Techno optimism for technical founders

  1. The Lightcone 2025 Forecast

    1 JAN

    The Lightcone 2025 Forecast

    Happy New Year! In this mini-episode, the Lightcone hosts ring in 2025 with their predictions for startups, AI, crypto, and more.

    7 min
  2. 2024’s Biggest Startup Trends

    13/12/2024

    2024’s Biggest Startup Trends

    2024 has been quite a year for AI and startups. As we head into the holidays and the new year, the Lightcone hosts reflect on this year’s biggest startup trends, moments, and breakthroughs.

    38 min
  3. Vertical AI Agents Could Be 10X Bigger Than SaaS

    22/11/2024

    Vertical AI Agents Could Be 10X Bigger Than SaaS

    As AI models continue to rapidly improve and compete with one another, a new business model is coming into view: vertical AI agents. In this episode of the Lightcone, the hosts consider what effect vertical AI agents will have on incumbent SaaS companies, what use cases make the most sense, and how there could be 300 billion-dollar companies in this category alone.

    42 min
  4. Why The Next AI Breakthroughs Will Be In Reasoning, Not Scaling

    14/11/2024

    Why The Next AI Breakthroughs Will Be In Reasoning, Not Scaling

    There's an ongoing debate about whether AI scaling laws will hold or hit a wall in the near future. However, what's clear now is today's models already have the power to increase productivity in ways that would have been unimaginable even a few years ago. In this episode of the Lightcone, we dig into the results of a recent o1 hackathon hosted by YC to find out what can be unlocked when founders leverage a SOTA reasoning model.

    35 min
  5. The 10 Trillion Parameter AI Model With 300 IQ

    01/11/2024

    The 10 Trillion Parameter AI Model With 300 IQ

    Earlier this month, OpenAI raised the largest venture round ever at $6.6 billion. The company’s CFO says AI is now at the point where orders of magnitude matter and the next generation of models will be capital intensive. In this episode of the Lightcone, the hosts consider what a world with ultra-intelligent models would look like, and what potential unlocks could be made possible.

    34 min
  6. Now Anyone Can Code: How AI Agents Can Build Your Whole App

    18/10/2024

    Now Anyone Can Code: How AI Agents Can Build Your Whole App

    With rapid advancements in LLMs, AI can now follow prompts to generate code and build functional custom software. So, how does the tech landscape change when coding becomes accessible to everyone? In this episode of Lightcone, we sat down with Amjad Masad, CEO of Replit—an AI-powered platform for software development and deployment—to explore how anyone can now tap into the power of coding.

    37 min
  7. Why Vertical LLM Agents Are The New $1 Billion SaaS Opportunities

    04/10/2024

    Why Vertical LLM Agents Are The New $1 Billion SaaS Opportunities

    As LLMs continue to improve, it's clear that vertical AI agents are key to the next generation of billion-dollar SaaS opportunities. In this episode of the Lightcone, we sat down with Jake Heller, the co-founder and CEO of Castext— which sold to Thomson Reuters for $650 million in 2023— to discuss what it takes to build a successful vertical AI company.

    37 min
  8. The Hunt for State of the Art (with Suhail Doshi)

    19/09/2024

    The Hunt for State of the Art (with Suhail Doshi)

    Suhail Doshi, a YC alumni who previously founded Mixpanel and Mighty, has created a state-of-the-art (SOTA) AI image diffusion model with Playground. The app allows you to talk to it like a graphic designer and helps you create imagery and text for a wide variety of use cases. In this episode of Lightcone, Suhail sits down with the hosts to talk about his experience building Playground with his team and what it takes to make a SOTA model. Try Playground: https://playground.com/design Read Playground V3 Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2409.10695

    56 min
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Techno optimism for technical founders

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