yep. and with the western funding model, how many hardware iterations can you do before you run out of runway?

I can say many things, but most people here will not believe me. I'd say just watch China do the 'impossible'. Then some self reflection should be in order.

yep. the word they use is probably 克制 or self-restraint. no need to raise so much cash if you can't use it.

in his article he talks about the negative aspects of getting everything you want. (all the money, brightest minds, biggest share in AI) etc. he says that these are the things that will cause a company to fail.

I shouldn't win too hard, because then I'll lose?

Yes. Once you're in such a comfortable position that you'll keep making lots of cash regardless of whether you do well or not, there is little incentive to make good decisions, let alone take risks. This is known as the "curse of Oil" and is also what Intel's decline is attributed to.

Catching up without overtaking

Sudden availability of capital and the perceived need to be seen doing something with it can be a curse. WeWork comes to mind, eg. Stay lean and mean until you actually need the capital. A company like DeepSeek will have zero issues raising anytime.

Yep. Classic “giant series A, company gets amazing office space” vibes.

> I shouldn't win too hard, because then I'll lose?

Yes. It's a known thing.

Problem of the local maxim, extreme dependency is the same as evolutionary pressure to specialize for it, eventually the process owns you.

Interesting, could you elaborate please? What does dependency mean in this context? That you become over specialized for a niche?

“Raising cash” isn’t necessarily “winning” since you have to give up equity/control, usually.

Raising more money ≠ winning harder.

Unless they have a shortage of mathematicians, physicists, ... it seems a fundraiser could help bypass a compute gap by focusing even more on inference and training efficiency.

is this similar to Meta starting to rent out own compute as they cant seem to do much with it and monetising it is much better ROI?...

Sorry to barge in here. I couldn't find a good place to place

https://github.com/demo-zexuan/liang-wenfeng-investor-meetin...

The current link is 404, can mods update to above, detach, make sticky?

(No response from mods, understandable)

I'm not sure I understand the question but I've replaced the top link (https://github.com/demo-zexuan/liang-wenfeng-investor-meetin...), which was 404ing, with the link in your comment here. Does that help?

Yes, thank you!

It's now dropped off the FrontPage but I suppose I will just repost at some point with a less controversial title

email hn@ycombinator.com

The maturity of leadership in China seems to be on a whole different level from the U.S.

Lots of companies in the U.S. have fallen victim to that syndrome, but if you used the word "restraint" in that context in Silicon Valley most people would look at you like you're insane.

as a lifelong chopstick user, this article is for one of those fault finding crazies.

hold the chopstick however you like. so long as you don’t drop things unintentionally it’s fine.

this is how and adult sounds like in a room full of children.

the lesson to learn is - don't let the conversation die off. think of all the weird scenarios that wouldn't make google sheets work.

e.g. no access to internet (or at least VPN access via completely locked down devices) / internal email server / only open source etc.

if something doesn’t exist in this world, no amount of money will guarantee that you will get it.

if it exists in abundance like the air that we breathe no amount of conspiracy will be able to monopolize it.

finance only works in a very narrow band of environmental conditions. we are very well past that.

employers that demand long hours do so because they have no other way to appraise employee ability.

they cannot judge a brilliant insight from a slacker that would have saved thousands of man-hours rushing the wrong way.

do you really want to work for such a company?

I was like the author of the article, then I realized that I was solving problems that were created by other peoples' incompetence. Sure they were challenging, fun but they didn't bring anything postive overall. The incompetent people are still there - causing more problems.

So I decided to find a worthwhile problem that deserved my talent. And I did. And I am now even more happy than before.

Sometimes it's useful to just solve the problem at hand and sometimes it's useful to solve the root problem. Sometimes solving the root cause is knowledge sharing or mentoring. Sometimes the entire task is just not what you want to be doing with your career.

Part of becoming more senior is learning when each is appropriate.

This is exactly where I am now. I had fun solving problems for the sake of solving them for the first ten years of my career. But the last couple of years have burnt me out as I realize this is not worth my time. I’m in the process of trying to find a worthwhile problem to solve, but it’s difficult to not just be jaded.

Mind sharing what that worthwhile problem is?

I have purposely omitted the specifics as I also have given up trying to convince others interested in my worthwhile problem. If interests align, we will naturally meet.

I usually tell them it is more important that they should take some time (6 months - 1 year) to reflect in isolation to find their own worthwhile problems, and not get distracted by fads and drama.

"Convincing others" is a serious problem on its own, and it's okay to let someone else handle it full-time.

Are the incompetent people your coworkers? Ideally you can be solving your customers problems, which is a nice terminating lens of “always useful”, tho you may still want to pick and choose.