Semil Shah is Out Of Office

Bullish

• $OPENAI— OpenAI is executing at an unprecedented rate with multiple hit apps and willingness to compete in any category, backed by exceptional leadership.

  • “OpenAI has sort of proven that nothing is safe. They came out with Sora, and now they've got their second sort of massive hit app, number one in the App Store now for, like, the past month. They are clearly just, like, willing to play in any category and play to win. And they've proven that they they can. They can do it.”

    Michael·0:20Hear it

  • “I think of OpenAI when you take the combination of the foundational technology, the applications that they've been able to build and ship fast on top of it, and the fact that you have Sam running it, who's not your average, oh, I just backed into the startup idea founder. It's a it's a serious threat.”

    Semil·11:53Hear it

  • “Knowing Sam from before personally and just like everyone's heard a lot of stories about him, he's not he's not kinda like that. He could say we're gonna do something and actually do it. Right. And he's delivered on so much already.”

    Semil·12:32Hear it
• $AIMODELS— AI and generative media are reaching a tipping point where regular consumers are adopting it for everyday use cases, with massive economic value creation ahead.

  • “Sora, OpenAI Sora has kind of brought that to the foreground now. Like Sora now that the app is out. This seems like the first time that regular non tech people are aware of generative video and it's like, oh my, oh my God. Yeah. I can make a video of anything.”

    Michael·7:05Hear it

  • “probably the greatest venture capitalist for our time, Peter Thiel, basically said that the economic value created from this disruption will be greater than the Internet.”

    Semil·16:35Hear it

  • “the entry points of where this technology is seeping and how it's changing behavior is just basic consumer behavior. I mean, I have so many friends who are using it for, like, any kind of relationship advice, whether with a family member, with a loved one, with a potential loved one.”

    Semil·19:13Hear it

Bearish

• $VC— Seed investing is under attack from multiple angles with accelerators eating the market and excessive capital creating poor investment conditions.

  • “I have a close friend who's been in seed as long as me who said accelerators are eating seed. That's what he just said. They're eating seed and turning it into that. So it's it's really under attack, I think, and very very challenging right now”

    Semil·40:53Hear it

  • “as an LP, when when you're investing, you want capital to be tight and time to be abundant. But when time is tight and capital is abundant, it's a terrible time to invest. And right now, it does feel like that.”

    Semil·1:02:02Hear it

  • “Somebody told me recently that they were competing on a seed deal with another seed investor in the Bay Area. And that seed investor who won the round, this is a sub $200,000,000 fund, flew the founder to Hawaii to win the deal.”

    Semil·59:39Hear it

Not investment advice.