Americans spent nearly $20 billion on pizza delivery in 2021.
Most of us could probably bake one at home, but speed and convenience are powerful incentives at dinner time.
The potential of AI tools like ChatGPT creates a similar dilemma: should companies license large language models without customization, or customize them and pay much higher usage fees?
“While building looks extremely attractive in the long run, it requires leadership with a strong risk appetite over an extended period of time,” writes ML engineer Tanmay Chopra.
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In a comprehensive article weighing development costs and technical debt against time-to-market, Chopra encourages readers to consider factors such as product defensibility and risk before deciding to build or buy.
Since most startups are not AI companies, his post also evaluates “middle ground approaches” such as rapid engineering, closed source approach, and building on open source solutions.
“If you want to be an AI company, work towards that over time: Store data neatly, start building an ML team, and identify use cases that will make money,” he advises.
Thank you so much for reading TC+ this week!
Walter Thompson
Editorial Manager, businessroundups.org+
@your protagonist
Table of Contents
4 practical steps for using no-code to evolve your prototype into an MVP
Image Credits: Luis Cagiao Photography (Opens in a new window) /Getty Images
Forget dogs: no-code development tools can be a non-technical founder’s best friend.
Building a minimum viable product once required engineering and design skills. Now bootstrapping founders can iterate without developers to keep costs down and expand their runway.
“Instead of getting caught up in designing the perfect and complete MVP release all at once, try to deliver value as quickly as possible and continuously improve your prototype,” advises Katherine Kostereva, CEO and managing partner of Creatio.
She shares four tactics for turning prototypes into usable products via no-code:
- Embrace a daily delivery approach.
- Proper scoping and decomposition.
- Carefully manage dependencies and disconnect them.
- Invest in continuous deployment automation.
Teach yourself growth marketing: How to conduct growth experiments through A/B testing
Image Credits: SCIENTIFIC PHOTO LIBRARY (Opens in a new window) /Getty Images
Despite the myth, sharks don’t have to keep swimming to keep breathing. Early-stage startups, on the other hand, are less fortunate.
If driving growth is a priority, companies should conduct an ongoing series of A/B tests that can help refine marketing messages and make their product pipelines more relevant to customer needs.
In part three of a five-article series on Growth Marketing Fundamentals, Jonathan Martinez explains how to properly manage A/B testing, identify statistical significance when reviewing data, and prioritize experiments that maximize reach and maximize impact.
Startups should expect more attention from VCs on their hiring plans
Image Credits: erhui1979/Getty Images
As investors exercise more due diligence, early stage hiring plans are being scrutinized more closely, Rebecca Szkutak reports.
“It’s not to say ‘don’t hire’ — it’s just that we now have to double-click on why,” said Angela Lee, an angel investor and venture partner who is also a professor at Columbia Business School.
‘What do you need X number of million dollars for? Why do you need a chief data scientist and architect?”
Dear Sophie: How do I change my L-1B to an H-1B through the lottery?
Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/businessroundups.org
Dear Sophia,
I am currently working in Seattle after moving from Chile on an L-1B visa.
Can I change my L-1B visa to an H-1B visa with another company? It is my understanding that L visas are limited to working only with the issuing company.
– Charming Chilean
Pitch Deck Teardown: Orange’s $2.5 million seed deck
Image Credits: Orange charger (Opens in a new window)
EV charging company Orange raised a $2.5 million seed round to scale plans to build a charging network for multi-unit properties, and the founders shared their winning pitch deck with businessroundups.org+:
- Cover slide
- Mission slide
- Problem slide
- Macroeconomic Market Shift (“Why Now?”)
- Market size slide
- Solution slide
- Value proposition slide
- Slide with product technical specifications
- Product slide
- Competitive landscape slide
- Slide competitive advantage
- Business model slide
- Cash flow slider
- Go-to-market slide
- Team slide
- Slide advisors
- “The Question” slide
- Contact slider
- Appendices cover slide
- Appendix I: Product Installation Photos
- Annex II: Financial projections for 3 years
- Appendix III: Personnel file slide
- Appendix IV: Sources and references
