1Mby1M AI Investor Forum: David Hornik, Lobby Capital (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Yes. With your venture capitalist hat on, I will also present another angle to how to think about this; partly because of the audience that we cater to, which includes these small entrepreneurs who are not necessarily thinking about venture capital.

There was a technology that you and I have gone through in personal experiences early on in our blogging days called AdSense, remember?

David Hornik: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: All over Asia, Latin America, India, of course, there were these people who were just making money off AdSense. So, these kinds of stuff that you don’t make a lot of money on, but you make a little bit of money on, and the e-commerce example is good.

AdSense is a very good example in this category. These can bring up very large numbers of people and their livelihood become their livelihoods.

David Hornik: Influencers are doing exactly that, right? It’s a whole new category. Who knew that it existed, but there a set of platforms now that make it possible for you to be an influencer, a micro influencer, a macro influencer, and make a living.

Sramana Mitra: Yes. I think this AI agent technology is interesting in that, from that hat on, I think if the layers of abstractions become really powerful and you can do very lightweight agent development, and then you can sell those agents, and there are now AI marketplaces coming together.

I think Dharmesh Singh, who was also an original early blogger during our days, and then went on to do HubSpot, he’s doing an agent marketplace. I think these are good infrastructures where people can sell. This is the equivalent of the eBay marketplace, right?

You put agents in the marketplace and people buy your agents and start using your agents.

So I think that infrastructure is also going to be important for a certain class of entrepreneurs who are not that sophisticated, who don’t have that level of intellectual horsepower, but still can make a living.

David Hornik: I think there is a distinction between venture backable business and a good business. I think there are lots of these tools that are going to enable people to build great businesses. I had not thought that agents were going to be one of those businesses and that one could build a purpose-driven agent that does a particular thing for others.

But you’re right. If there are marketplaces of agents and one can create it and make it available, then it’ll be like a physical good, right? It does things like scheduling my kids’ soccer team.

Sramana Mitra: Small point products.

David Hornik: Which is great. Again, I think that if one can create a solution that generates more capital than the cost to create it, and therefore is a greater leverage on one’s human capacity and time; that’s a win. And the more people we can do that for, the more of a win it is. I do hope that it creates some general and genuine innovation that we start making the planet a better place, that we don’t just sort of optimize humans out of making a living in the name of extracting a few pennies.

But the good news about these shifts is that humans who are doing jobs that involve other humans will always be engaged. I have a nephew who is currently applying to nursing school. Nurses will be needed, buffers will be needed. Yes. Roofers will be needed. AI is not going to, in the near term, say fix my broken toilet.

Sramana Mitra: Yes. That’s a good thing. What’s missing on that front is the financial infrastructure to offer good quality nursing at scale to 10 billion for sure.

David Hornik: You should solve that problem but not by creating efficiency that makes the human nurses’ lives worse. But by creating efficiency that make people healthier, and makes the nurses have a more rational life. So let’s hope we find that.

This segment is part 6 in the series : 1Mby1M AI Investor Forum: David Hornik, Lobby Capital
1 2 3 4 5 6 7