Everybody Loves The Sunshine
w.238 | SMB SaaS Benchmarking, Lineage IPO, training AI models for knowledge work, peak burning man
Dear Friends,
Besides being the last month of summer, August also means a “quality inspiring mingled admiration and reverence; having an aspect of solemn dignity or grandeur; sublime; majestic.”
That’s a nice description of the month we are in. I’ve been enjoying the sunshine this week, and I hope you have too.
Today's Contents:
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
Song of the Week: Everybody Loves The Sunshine
Good Reads: Sensible Investing
2024 Vertical & SMB SaaS Benchmarking Survey by Tidemark.
Inside the Company that Gathers ‘Human Data’ for Every Major AI Firm. The article discusses how Turing, a technology staffing company, sells data to AI model builders. In short, the paragraphs below make it clear how AI is being trained to replace or augment most knowledge economy jobs.
In a method called supervised fine tuning, models can then learn new skills by ingesting specialized data like the coding examples that Turing collected for OpenAI.
The idea is not to get the model to memorize the new data. Rather, the trick and the challenge is to get the model to “generalize,” so that it learns the underlying principles behind the data.
Siddharth believes this is the next frontier in improving AI models. But to do this, he says, they need data that can’t be found anywhere on the internet.
When one client wants an AI model to get smarter in a specific area, Turing will hire hundreds of subject-matter experts, who will be asked to create “input and output pairs,” which are like inner monologues of questions and answers.
For instance, a chemistry expert might start off by asking about a specific molecule and then write an answer. Then follow it up with another question, and so on. This might go back and forth ten or so times. The subject-matter experts Turing hires range from PhDs in neuroscience to sales professionals who can analyze forecasts.
The company might end up with thousands of these monologues, which in the AI industry is known as “multi-turn data.” It says they are one of the keys to getting AI models to reason and understand specific concepts.
This so-called “agentic” era of AI is not yet here, but Siddharth paints a picture of an AI model that can draw on all of its specialized knowledge. If it’s asked to analyze the top venture capital firms, for instance, it might draw on the knowledge of finance professionals to know what kind of data to look for. It might then use its coding knowledge to write a script that can go out and access the relevant data and convert it into the proper format.
The Transformational Opportunity of AI on ICT Jobs Report. This is a 197-page treatise is best summarized by the finding that 92% of jobs analyzed are expected to undergo either high or moderate transformation due to advancements in AI.
Logistics Giant Lineage Raised $4.44 billion in the Biggest IPO of 2024. Lineage specializes in temperature-controlled warehouses, operating 482 of them worldwide and serving more than 13,000 customers, many of whom are involved in the food supply chain as distributors, retailers, and manufacturers.
Congratulations to my friend Elliott Wolf, who has been the Chief Data Scientist at Lineage for the last 11 years. He and his team of physics and math PhDs complete optimization problems every day to fine-tune the cold-storage supply chain — and, as Elliott describes, ‘fit more things in the box.’ Whenever I’m in SF, I try to stop by the office and always leave inspired by their methodical genius.
Has Burning Man Peaked? (Linked to PDF, published in Bloomberg). Burning Man has always been sold out, and it is hard to get tickets. When I went in 2017, there was a highly competitive online lottery, and only 1 in 5 got tickets. This year, as of today, you can buy them online here.
Matt Mihaly, a games entrepreneur and longtime Burner, said he was wondering the same thing. Maybe what Burning Man once offered — a way to live differently for a week — is gradually becoming, well, kind of normal.
“I feel like Burning Man has gone a little past its peak cultural relevance,” he said. “I wonder if the pseudo-mainstreaming of it is making it less cool.”
Song of the Week: Everybody Loves The Sunshine
Video on YouTube.
“Everybody Loves The Sunshine,” Roy Ayers.
I picked this song because we are entering August and deserve a good summer anthem to enjoy the rest of the reason.
The review below is adapted from this article.
While recording at Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Lady Studios in New York City on a beautifully hot and sunny day, Roy Ayers would stumble upon the song that arguably defines his career. As the phrase “everybody loves the sunshine” lodged in his mind, he began exploring and constructing vibrant imagery, picturing “bees and things and flowers” as they floated across his mind. As the lyrics spontaneously and joyfully emerged, the musician knew exactly how he wanted the song to sound, envisaging a kaleidoscopic mix of piano, vibraphone, and synthesizer to evoke the psychedelic pleasures of peak summertime. The band waited for the sun to set and the heat to fade before dipping into the famed studio to lay down the composition to become their most iconic jam.
The result was a song that remains one of the archetypal summer anthems, its luxuriously slow pace and synth sun-beams evoking the hazy pleasure of a July afternoon.
My life, my life, my life, my life
In the sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine
Sunshine, everybody loves the sunshineSelfie of the Week
This is a video, not a selfie. But it’s okay to break the rules from time to time. Hannah Frankman and I recorded this conversation for her podcast a few months ago.
Hannah grew up homeschooled, skipped college to go straight into the startup world, and has worked in alternative education for almost ten years. Her podcast and Twitter account (RebelEducator) are highly influential and beloved in the alternative education universe.
Hannah is also my neighbor in Austin. One of the things that I love about Austin is that you bump into your friends around town and get to collaborate.
Thanks for reading, friends. Please always be in touch.
As always,
Katelyn