I've been asking myself this question in the last year:
> Why do I want to make music?
I picked a basic DJ controller and a midi controller bundled with Ableton. I'm a novice, but I love listening to music and dissecting what makes a good performance. I crave that feeling of getting chills when I find something new that moves me in new ways. This set was a pretty recent example:
That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.
I resolved early on that I was never going to make a money doing this, which simplified things greatly. There's a primal part of our brain that craves adoration. I do wish for others to adore my music. Even if it's a handful of people. I do wish to perform publicly one day, even if it's at a park for passersby.
Mostly I just want something to move my brain in different ways. I want to create something beautiful.
> ...and noticed companies have become less likely to offer their time for ride-alongs and research calls. They get too many requests, and vibe coding is drawing their attention to self-build.
Is this ACTUALLY happening? Are entrepreneurs who get into vibe-coders really eating up time a bunch of time for trades people?
This finding is crazy! I wonder how many modern health issues have to do with healthy blood/nutrient flow to tissues, that are basically solved with either mild/moderately amounts of movement and a balanced diet.
In CA, my doctor can refer me to get a Cologuard. But it's private pay, and they want payment up front since isurance companies don't restrict doctor's ability, only reimbursement.
So they may not be willing (even though they are able) perform procedure/test if they aren't confident they'll get paid.
No doubt it's astounding, and I have no experience underwriting these kinds of scale of investments...
...but if I were a recent employee diluted as part of this raise (even with the massive uplift in revenue) I'd be very skeptical about an sort of financial outcome for myself.
I would argue the largest developer tools/services acquisition in recent history was GitHub (assuming you don't count RedHat in that category). GitHub was primarily an acquisition focused on acquiring the network of developers, based on the trust and cachet GitHub had earned, with the intent to upsell (land and expand) the developers at large Enterprise companies on downstream workflows and tools.
If I were an employee looking to join Entire, or a developer evaluating the durability of Entire for my needs over the long-term, I'd ask things like —
- What's the terminal value of a DevTool in the AI era? Is it closer to a standard 10x ARR? or maybe 100x...perhaps 1000x?
- Is there value in the asset attributable to the network? If so, is it defensible? What is the likelihood protocols emerge that simply disintermediate the network moat of a AI agent memory company like Entire?
- What kind of AI data are developers willing to silo with a single vendor? What kind of controls do Enterprises expect of an AI agent memory system? Can Entire reasonably provide them to grow in the next 12-24 months?
- As a potential employee...if you join a company with a $60M seed funding and 19 employees, what is the ARR they need to achieve based on the first product in market in roughly ~12 months? $6M...$12M...20M? Is there a DevTools company that's ever done that!? What is the thesis for "this time is different"? Getting developers to pay for things is tough 'doncha know?
Only then can you ask basic technical diligence questions —
- Is Git a system that can scale to be the memory system and handle the kind of tasks that AI agents are expected handle?
- Are the infrastructure costs for these early platform decisions here reasonable over the long-term? Or do they just run out of money?
I wish them the best, and I hope employees get liquidity, and people take money off the table in a responsible way.
So let's say TMSC reciprocated Apple's consistency as a customer by giving them preferential treatment for capacity. It's good business after all.
However, everyone knows that good faith reciprocity at that scale is not rewarded. Apple is ruthless. There are probably thousands of untold stories of how hard Apple has hammered it's suppliers over the years.
While Apple has good consumer brand loyalty, they arguably treat their suppliers relatively poorly compared to the Gold standard like Costco.
Perhaps a naive question — but why would someone use a dedicated database provider and connect from another cloud provider's application service? ...as opposed to using the same provider's db + app service offering?
Wouldn't this introduce additional latency among other issues?
Honest question — why is the CEO of a Enterprise cloud storage company so out in the public touting the benefits of AI?
Conversely, why aren't the senior leaders of Google Drive, SharePoint, etc. so consistently speaking about the benefits of AI?
A couple top of mind thoughts on the range of outcomes:
-Perhaps it's more of a requisite function of a company that went through a long phase of mild-growth (even anemic relative to the Nasdaq composite) and is seeking to maintain relevance with PR/Marketing spend
-They are investing in a step function product roadmap that could accelerate revenue growth and are positioning the brand for a future product launch.
-A slightly more cynical view, the CEO is searching for a new home for the company? It's been over 20 years, which fees like long time for a public technology company to have a single CEO.
-The CEO is positioning himself personally for a new VC fund. He's had some success with previous investments and is looking to preemptively market his new fund.
-A slightly more realistic view, the CEO (who seems really enthusiastic) is honestly just like the rest of us and got nerd-swiped by this AI thing and feels genuinely excited about it :-)
Either way he seems very well networked and able to appear nearly everywhere and re-cap information and insights from other source material. I'm curious what the underlying incentives/outcomes are for this kind of PR blitz.
> Why do I want to make music?
I picked a basic DJ controller and a midi controller bundled with Ableton. I'm a novice, but I love listening to music and dissecting what makes a good performance. I crave that feeling of getting chills when I find something new that moves me in new ways. This set was a pretty recent example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfF8jzBVWvM
That being said, the world is increasingly crowded with "good enough" music.
I resolved early on that I was never going to make a money doing this, which simplified things greatly. There's a primal part of our brain that craves adoration. I do wish for others to adore my music. Even if it's a handful of people. I do wish to perform publicly one day, even if it's at a park for passersby.
Mostly I just want something to move my brain in different ways. I want to create something beautiful.