[cornholio]

But I really wonder how many of these founders can convincingly explain in 5 minutes how gradient descent or transformers work. I know that's the first type of question I would ask any founder of an AI company before investing.

[admissionsguy]

The typical thinking among businesspeople is that you can always "hire a nerd" for those things. The early YC was a departure from that with PG praising technical prowess in his essays so much. It would seem this mindset has much less sway now.

[palata]

Do VCs understand that? Do they care? My feeling is that they want to see a projected growth that looks like an exponential, and buzzwords.

[mmmmmbop]

The combination of gradient descent and transformers is a weird choice to ask founders about. One is an almost trivial algorithm, whereas the other is a cutting-edge research result.