*The big platforms have gold bricks everywhere and will pick up the closest gold bricks*
A very compelling framework I learned/heard from @DanRose999
I was running a payment company, TrialPay, that handled payments for almost every social gaming company. All of these social gaming companies (by definition!) operated primarily on Facebook.
I met Dan (who ran BD for Facebook) probably around 2010 and outlined a very big vision for how our companies could work together.
And I’ll never forget what he said to me or how it said it. He was incredibly respectful and attentive, but said something to the tune of: “Alex, that’s a really compelling opportunity and thanks for reaching out about it. It makes a ton of sense. But the problem is we have gold bricks all over the place and you’re describing a gold brick that’s maybe 50 feet away. We just have to focus on the gold bricks around us first.”
It would have been a huge deal for us, and even a huge deal for Facebook, but not relative to so many other pieces of “low hanging fruit” — or gold bricks that were just lying around that could simply be picked up.
I can only imagine what it’s like at a company like OpenAI right now. Gold bricks everywhere as far as the eye can see, but odds are high they’re going to pick up the closest bricks first.
And good for founders to understand that relevance is consequently not always symmetrical.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur (cofounder@ TrialPay, Yub, Affirm, Point, TXN), investor (General Partner @a16z), husband, father and sarcast (one who is sarcastic)