[echelon]

Disney invited me to talk about my GenAI startup and research in front of a bunch of their execs across ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Streaming, etc. All of their folks were super nice and gracious to our small startup except for one.

Steve May basically scoffed at how little my small team could accomplish. Mind you we were using mocapped skeletal animation and object animation curves to fully steer video diffusion over a year and a half ago. Before image to video modalities. He picked apart our training and engineering and gloated that they could do better.

The incident is seared into my brain.

I can't help but think of Disney as the Empire and Pixar as the Death Star.

[w_for_wumbo]

If he was upset - it wasn't how little your team could accomplish. That would bring the feeling of admiration. It's most likely projection of their inability to deliver results.

[dmos62]

Sounds like the guy felt threatened by your business and insecure about his.

[oidar]

> gloated that they could do better.

did they? Anything good come from that meeting?

[spuz]

So the classic Silicon Valley brain rape is actually real?