The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Why All AI Companies Are Under-Valued | The Future of Foundation Models: Scaling Laws, Generalised vs Specialised, Commoditised? | From Unable to Afford Rent to Raising $130M From Index and Peter Thiel with George Sivulka @ Hebbia
Wed, 22 Jan 2025
George Sivulka is the founder and CEO of Hebbia, is one of the fastest-growing gen AI companies and they recently raised a $130M series B. Investors include the company include hailed names such as a16z, Peter Thiel, Index, GV and others. In Today’s Episode with George Sivulka We Discuss: 04:47 Three Traits The Best Founders All Share? 08:11 How Cold Calling NASA Changed My Life 12:01 From Stealing Food From Stanford to Pitching Peter Thiel 17:22 Lessons working with Peter Thiel 26:39 The Future of AI and Business Applications 33:03 The Future of Employment with AI 33:45 Debunking the Myths of AI Job Displacement 35:09 The Future of Models: Many specialised or few generalised? 35:56 Scaling at Inference: A New Frontier 38:10 The Impact of Scaling Laws on Foundation Models 40:40 The Future of AI and Enterprise Value 43:43 The Geopolitical Influence on AI 45:03 The Commoditization of AI Models 47:47 Why Foundation Models Will Not Follow the Same Path of Cloud 52:53 Why All Companies, Both AI and Non-AI Are Undervalued
Full Episode
You can bucket great founders into three backgrounds. I think probably the most common is that you had kind of a messed up childhood. The second most common would be you're gay. And the third most common would be you were adopted. Look at like a list of all time greats. Elon Musk kind of messed up childhood, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs adopted, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, you know, like publicly gay.
And I think that all of these early life experiences end up giving you some desire, some deeper passion to go out and prove yourself.
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today we have one of the most wild stories in AI, Hebbia. Three years ago, George Sivulka couldn't make his rent of $300 a month for a mattress on the floor. He snuck into Stanford dining room halls for meals after dropping out. He raised his first two rounds of financing with clothes hanging behind him on Zoom.
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