[cmgriffing]

We should thank companies for warning us during the interview process that they are so separated from reality (especially in the AI era)

If AI can’t make them recognize a work life balance has value then it’s easy to see they don’t believe the “force multiplier” BS they are peddling

[alsetmusic]

I got LinkedIn notifications for both Anthropic and OpenAI with my exact job description, but at 3-4x the pay. I said hell no. They would want me to actually work. The job I have now is easy. Plus, they're slated for mass layoffs when the market realigns. I work a gov job that's protected from market layoffs and the security of that is too good to give up.

[nfw2]

They are worth 3 billion after two years so it seems like they are doing all right with their strategy although I'm old now and don't want to do that

[manwithopinions]

They’re not really, it’s just the YC hype cycle. The business is selling insurance to other YC startups with some AI flair. They’re not even the first YC startup to do this, a previous YC insurance startup was acquired a few years ago for ~$1bn. So, they’re worth 3x the exit of the exact same company… because of what, AI? The fact that they’re cloning other software to release SaaS products is extremely bearish. Why are they wasting their time on this? A wildly successful $3bn startup would not spend their precious resources by launching a $10/m document sending SaaS. They’ll be doing down rounds soon enough. Could you imagine Paul Graham encouraging this?

[aleqs]

A big part of the US VC operating model these days seems to be just rebuilding existing products with slight changes, then pushing all of their other startups to use that version of it. This is only going to accelerate with AI. Why pay some company you don't own to do thing for you, when you can just copy the company (maybe even improve it in some ways), seed it with with your large existing user base, then have it do the thing for you (while also generating profit from other customers and rapidly scaling in users and valuation itself).

The reality is most of what most tech startups are doing is not actually hard and has no moat. The moat is in getting users/customers - connections/marketing/sales - product quality also matters of course, but there are plenty hyperscaler unicorns who's product is dogshit and vice versa.

[mlnj]

Listened to the founder on 20VC episode talk endlessly about sleeping and showering in the office and comparing their insurance company to Alexander the Great and Napoleon.

Silicon Valley is just so disconnected from reality.

[FridgeSeal]

Would pay good money to see Silicon Valley complete their disconnection from reality and drift off into the void. The rest of us would get some semblance of normality back if they did.

[manwithopinions]

Also, I should add, they’re growing fast because they will underwrite anyone for anything. They’re one “oops our AI underwriting has been taking on far too much risk” away from disaster. That they’re demanding 7 days a week from their employees while spending their time building a dataroom product instead of, I don’t know, improving their underwriting, is a bad sign.

Normally getting insurance from a startup like Corgi would be a very bad idea because what’s to say they’ll be able to pay out claims? I assume other YC startups are happy because a) they can’t get insurance anywhere with good underwriting b) they figure YC will bail Corgi out when it goes wrong because seemingly every YC startup depends on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_retention_group

“Policyholders should be aware that certain Specialty Insurance Carriers may not be admitted insurers in the state in which the insured risk is located. Policies issued by non-admitted insurers, risk retention groups, captive insurers, and certain other Specialty Insurance Carriers may not be subject to all of the insurance laws and regulations of your state. State insurance insolvency guaranty funds may not be available for policies issued by non-admitted insurers, risk retention groups, captive insurance companies, offshore insurers, or other non-admitted Specialty Insurance Carriers. In the event of the insolvency of such a carrier, policyholders may not have access to state guaranty fund protection and may bear the risk of the carrier's inability to pay claims.”

https://www.corgi.insure/disclaimers

[petesergeant]

> Normally getting insurance from a startup like Corgi would be a very bad idea because what’s to say they’ll be able to pay out claims?

Actually normally it’s fine because it’s rarely the startup selling insurance who’s doing the underwriting.

Corgi is more worrying because they’re (apparently) underwriting too.

[manwithopinions]

My understanding is a normal insurance tech startup would be acting as a broker.

A rare but sensible insurance tech startup would use external underwriters and reinsurance and provide insolvency protection.

Corgi doesn’t have any external underwriters, doesn’t have any insolvency protection, doesn’t have any reinsurance.

I think they’re bad on all 3 points, not just the underwriting?

[skeeter2020]

If this is the scenario, it's no wonder they're underwriting everyone & everything, and can do this competitively, because a broker would need to find either enough new clients and/or efficiencies to justify being the middleman between the customer and the actual insurer. That's typically been the strategy of every financial tech company; I don't see any secret sauce with Corgi beyond "'cause AI!". Move fast and break things is not what I'd want in my insurance company.

[rwarren63]

look at coalition or atbay as an example of how an insurtech starts underwriting and moves into capacity later successfully

[tclancy]

Is that how things work now? Well then, I m worth five billion nd say things should stop working that way. Persuaded?

[fennecbutt]

Lmao tech money is fake. Look at how much AI companies are throwing around. Musk is personally worth 1T now supposedly.

It's all virtual valuations. The stock market is poison but most people on here won't admit to that because they have their own interests in it. What a joke our species is lmao. We're still grabbing big sticks to hit each other with and worrying about our neighbors coming to take our rocks because we're all just monkeys still, even though we pretend we're not.

[FireBeyond]

> Musk is personally worth 1T now supposedly.

Not after all the SpaceX "settling": https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2026/06/24/elon-musk-...