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11 Apr 2025 Latent Space SF Compute: Commoditizing Compute to solve the GPU Bubble forever
“Um, the, yeah, I think every time we tried to do the, the only caveat to this, the only caveat that we ever violate this rule with, uh, is when we're pitching San Francisco, I think San Francisco is amazing.”
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- 11 Apr 2025
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…You have a very nice brand with a, you know, clear sky. We have to ask about the website. Yeah. What was the inspiration behind it? Why did you not go the black neon, more cool thing and go the more nature? I don't think I really am a black neon sort of person. I say. I'm wearing black pants and I thought I was wearing a black shirt, but apparently I'm not. So, um, the actual, the actual thing was a lot of companies do this thing where they, their website, you go to there and it's like a magical experience and like everything is extreme and amazing and credible and then you go to the product and it's like some SaaS app or something. Um, and it's like not actually that exciting. And that expectation of being like really, really good. And then the fall off the drop of not being really, really good. Yeah. It's something that from a product perspective, I never want it to happen, especially because in the beginning, like our product was really bad. And so I don't want to set the expectation that it's going to be like an amazing experience. I want to set the expectation that it's going to be like a good price for short term bursts. And so what we did instead is we set the thing to be really low. You set your expectations really low and then you get a supercomputer for like millions of dollars cheaper than you would have otherwise gotten your supercomputer. And so you have the opposite expectation. You have like really low expectations that are like mild or met higher. Yeah. And I think that's like the correct way to do things. But also I think we were just like so sick of hype and excitement and, um, I just like really want to like not do that. It's weird. Like by, by being anti-hype, you have created hype. Like I would say like the, the, the, the, the vibes are immaculate, you know, like you just, you go to like at the, the bay, the Cal trade, you just put up like a banner. This just, just says SF compute. True. That banner was created about five minutes before we had to actually put something up like before the deadline was there. Yeah. So it opens up Microsoft word and you did some serif. What is the font? Exactly. I don't know. Yeah. That was, um, indeed. Um, the, yeah, I think every time we tried to do the, the only caveat to this, the only caveat that we ever violate this rule with, uh, is when we're pitching San Francisco, I think San Francisco is amazing. So sometimes you will see these like advertisements from the city. Yeah. The city. Um, so if there's a part of San Francisco computes brand, which are these beautiful like images of SF. Yeah. And I am the complete opposite about this. I am such a San Francisco promoter that any time we talk about the city, I want to show the city from the like eyes that we have, which is mostly just gorgeous, beautiful area with nature. Like a lot of people think about San Francisco and they think about like tech industry or they think, yeah, or the tenderloin or something like grind culture or something. And no, like I think about like the fog, um, and just like the gorgeous view over the bridge and just the fact that there is this like massive amount of optimism in the city. ind culture or something. And no, like I think about like the fog, um, and just like the gorgeous view over the bridge and just the fact that there is this like massive amount of optimism in the city. And it's the backdrop of that optimism is the most beautiful countryside in all of the world. And so anytime we talk about SF, you will see like, or like we have a billboard somewhere that's just like local friendly supercomputer or whatever. And then the backdrop is like beautiful and amazing. And that's because to some extent we're pitching the city and the people here. And I think that people in the city here are actually really amazing. And so you get to earn the brand. Um, cause the expectations are met. Whereas I think on our own product, I'm typically want it to be better. And so I set the brand a lot lower. Um, and then the expectations are higher. Um, and you still meet the expectations, but you, you set them a little lower. I know. Are you the designer? I know you have an artistic side. Um, so, uh, I was in the beginning, so, uh, I'm like a figurative artist, so I draw people. Um, but we've worked with a design firm. Airfoil was really excellent with us. And then, um, nowadays though, John Pham, um, had a design from Vercel. Yeah. John is unbelievably amazing. Yeah. Um, I think the amount of care and craft and attention to detail that he puts into just everything is so cool. Yeah. Um, like if you go on our buy page right now, you go to sfcompute.com slash buy. There is an Easter egg there that will, you should find. I almost don't want to spoil it, but you should go find that Easter egg. If you just like hover the mouse around the thing in the top right hand corner, um, you will, you'll find it. Yeah, tweet at Evan if you find it. And then the, um, other person is, um, Ethan Anderson, our COO, who, um, has this really, really cool design. He has a RISD design background. And so, uh, his, like, uh, he used to be sort of industrial designery. I'm probably going to say that wrong. He's probably not an actual industrial designer, but design background, same. So I think between me and John and, uh, Ethan, um, I think we. The source of the vibes. The source of the vibes. I had to ask. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to zoom out a little bit. One of the last things I wanted to ask you was actually like, I remember, I think the first time that you was in like kind of cello and you were working on your email. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I have a favorite pet topic of mine. We were here with Dharmesh yesterday talking about someone, build an agent that reads my emails. Yeah. And you did. And I think I actually paid for the first one. You were, you were so excited in the early GPT three days. I was like, you were like, uh, I'm building the most expensive startup ever. Yeah. It's so expensive. Anyway. So the point being what I'm trying to get to is you are a very smart guy. You built email. You, you didn't like it. You pivoted away. I've seen other, like every year there's someone who is like, I will crack email. Yeah. And I'll, and then, and then they give up. Yeah. What is so hard about email? I didn't pivot away because the product or the idea was bad.…
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