[no_butterscotch]

> The “open startup” idea always seemed superficial to me, founders seeking external validation.

Similarly to me is the "democratizing X" startup. Those were never not about the same thing as every other startup: VC money and getting a return. But it was trendy to was "we're democratizing <thing>".

[ragnarsson]

For me democratizing can mean "We have done something hard and we are going to share the benefits of it for minimal gain". The business is not lucrative for others to copy because margins are low.

OpenAI is a capped profit company. https://openai.com/blog/openai-lp/. If they become as big as everyone today thinks they will become, they can be democratizing AI.

Also note that, lot of progress in AI has happened because big companies are willing to share their research publicly, which helps them in attracting talent.

The hard thing about Indie businesses is proving product-market fit. Rest of what they do can easily be copied even if they don't share info. Not sharing revenue numbers will just help them with others not going for similar ideas.

But sharing info leads to social media following, which is key to marketing for many of these companies.

[orra]

An 100x return on investment is hardly a cap, or a minimal gain.

OpenAI are a traditional for profit company, milking PR like “open source”, and “non-profit”, without being either.

[throw123123123]

Few phrases are as popular and as cringey as "democratizing X". Is it going to have voting? Political power? How did we get to the point that we use democratizing as a way to say popularizing.

And Robinhood still keeps saying this as a tagline!