[allencheng]

Interesting analogy, though not perfect. The key question is to what % of the user experience the core technology provides.

For software, the programming language plays a small %, from the user's perspective - it's what is done with it that matters. Thus, "building a Python startup is a bad idea because everyone else has Python" doesn't make sense.

For online mattress companies, the mattress is really 95% of the experience (with minor points for delivery and customer support). Thus, "building an online mattress company is a bad idea because everyone sells the same mattresses and no one has a product edge" does make sense.

Video startups are more like programming languages, IMO. The key of the user experience is less the video technology and more what videos are actually accessible. Here, the network effects of user-generated content (Youtube, Tiktok) or proprietary videos (Netflix) are the real secret sauce.

For GPT-3 startups, the question is whether GPT-3 forms the vast majority of the value or just a small % of it. The lower the % it takes up in your product, the more likely you can build a competitive advantage in technology.