YouSaid · the spoken record

Amin Vahdat

lines on the record: 32
first: 2025-05-01
most recent: 2025-05-01
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“First or second is where I would put it. Yeah. Listen, this has been amazing. I got to have you on the pod again. Anytime you got like three or four really interesting use cases that you guys discovered, come back on and let's break them down. This has been amazing. Thanks again to Amin Vadat for joining us here on the AI Basic Series. Go to this week in startups.com slash basics. You'll see all the basic series in one place for more insights. Take a minute. Learn some more. Go to Google Clouds, Future of AI, Prospectus for Startups Report. Let me give you the URL. It's also in the show notes and everywhere. G-O-O.g-L-E slash future of AI. That's that Google short URL. G-O-O.g-L-E slash future of AI. You're going to get predictions. Real world examples, startup advice, and you're going to discover what the top AI leaders have to say about the future of AI and its impact on your business. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time on AI Basics.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And here's Yeah, because this is, there's a really good book Super Forecasting. I don't know if you ever read it Basically, it tells you how to become a forecaster. And one of the key things is writing down why you made the decision right as you're making the decision and after you've made it. So if AI can just bring us the stuff, tell it the decision it would make, and then we make our decision, the reinforcement learning that could occur. We're only in the, what, the second inning of agents, you think it was a nine inning game?”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's not going to be like, I wonder if this is going to hurt his feelings that we actually had this incredible company apply and we missed it. Somebody might not tell me that because they don't want to make me feel bad. I was going to be like, hey, dummy, missed”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of this startup, you know, basically the deal memo, it's actually getting close, which means we can process more companies and not miss companies, which is really sins of omissions in venture. If you miss Google, you miss YouTube, you miss Instagram, whatever you missed, defines your career. And so, how close am I to having this associate agent?”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the simple thing I'll give you but one example, we have 20,000 people apply for funding. It's like second only to a Y Combinators program. There's a lot of people coming in, they send us a bunch of information, and then we have literally seven researchers sit there, full-time people. And categorize the startup, make sure that what they tell us they're doing, oh, it's a SaaS company, it's a marketplace company, one founder, it's three founders. And I have a system like if they have these 13 qualities, that's what I'm up to, these are like reasons to get excited or maybe get more curious about the startup. So we're building an agent now who we're kind of architecting how do we get as clean information in, clean up the information we have, check it with other sources, look at other competitive startups and build the dossier.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I am studying everybody in our venture firm on our podcasting teams. I study what they do that's repetitive. I say to them ADD automate, deprecate, delegate. Yeah, like, do we have, is there a reason we're doing this? Let's just have that fundamental question if we're not doing just deprecate it. Okay, now we're left with like, can we automate it or can we delegate it? We delegate it, we'll use an Athena assistant, you know, somebody in the lowest cost place in the world. You know, where they have great college educated people who can do it, or an outside firm, delegate our accounting legal to outsource other firms. So then that leaves automate. Really interesting how some of the young people have working for me have got their heads around this already.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stock trading app that doesn't charge people Robin Hood, like these Airbnb we weren't in, but that was a weird one, you know, millions of people got sleep on people's couches. What are you seeing out there that's weird, odd, or otherworldly? You don't have to name the company, but just things people are doing with the tools.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We build things as technologists. It goes out there and then they decide what's going to happen. What are you seeing out there on the streets? You guys get a unique view since you're providing to, I guess it's low millions of startups or enterprises now with these tools and on consumer basis billions. What are you seeing people do that you didn't expect or that is just kind of weird odd, you know, that's what I look for as an entrepreneur and as an investor. I look for those projects that people go non-consensus, never going to work. Why would people need a meditation app? We invested in comm. Nobody needs their own personal driver. You're doing a car service company, Uber”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, this is where you do hit a roadblock because you're not just releasing something to 10 million or 1 million or 100 million people. Have to actually solve it for the two billion people using those really interesting products. William Gibson said something really interesting in one of his books. The street finds its own use for technology.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So crazy to think about just when you're, and this is one of the great things about, you know, companies reaching a billion users, and listen, a number of companies have done it. And I think Google has six products that have reached a billion users each. Gmail search, Chrome, Android, YouTube, What's the sixth? Has docs? Is Google Docs? And that suite hit a billion? I don't know.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So maybe you talk a little bit about the history of transformers here and then what Google is doing with TPUs and why that's going to change compute in some major way over the coming years.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what is Google doing in the TPU space? You guys created this concept, correct? Like these were papers that came out of, I believe, DeepMind or another unit. I don't know the history exactly.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't put it in folders. Just search. You're wasting your own time. And you think about how prescient that is. That's how you have to think as an entrepreneur now. I'm trying to get out like what are businesses that are constrained.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the interesting thing is, I was, I mean, I'm name dropping here like crazy, but I remember talking to Larry and I said, how can I delete emails and Gmail? He's like, you just archive. And I was like, wait, what do you mean? Like, what does archive mean? It's like, well, you just put it away, but it's still there. And I was like, that doesn't make sense. You either delete it or you keep it. He's like, no, this archive, new thing. And I said, no, I like to delete them. If I've read it, I've processed it. It gets deleted. Then I don't have to worry about the storage. And he's like, you're not going to have to worry about storage anymore. Archive it and then he was like, Why are you putting things in folders? Because I was showing him how he was just in the gym.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they had to charge users. And so they were gated by this thing. And then a bunch of entrepreneurs were like, you know what? We're going to go unlimited and let's see what happens. And everybody thought YouTube would just. Wouldn't be fundable as a startup. And I think we know how that sort of went. So we can actually think about that ourselves. Yeah, I'm looking it up right now, one gigabyte. April 1st, 2004. I remember Lori giving me my invite back then gigabyte.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then at some point, again, boop, infinite. Flickr. Incredible photo sharing app. If you just pause for a second as an entrepreneur and realize Gmail Flickr YouTube. We're not considered viable businesses because of the cost.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was whoever was hosting your video would turn off your server because you had used up your bandwidth allocation. So posting a video meant you got a $3,000 hosting bill, you maxed it out, they turned it off. Was this whole concept that video hosting had to be paid? Then there was this little company Google that was like, hey, maybe we should start a second product. And Lori Park was like, hey, I got an invite for you, JCal. Check out this Gmail. You get three invites yourself. Those three invites became worth like $1,000 at the peak because there was, I don't know, what was the first? Gmail storage, five gigs of storage. It was something crazy at that time. Maybe it was 10 gigs.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, physics is not exponential in the human experience, like if you became a faster runner because you trained every day and you perfected your diet and you had the greatest trainer in the world, you'd be shaving your 12 minute mile to 10. Eight over, you know, whatever number of months or years Do that. We just, you're right, we don't actually. Think of the we can't conceptualize these things, but one way to think about it is to look backwards at what happened during the period you're talking about. And during the period you're talking about, I remember it very well. Because Chad Hurley. Doing YouTube And the price that you would pay for having a video go viral on the internet.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're not like, can we get another million dollars because we're going to spend another hundred thousand a month on this? They're now not able to utilize the infrastructure as fast as it's being built out or made more efficient. That's a very interesting, have you ever seen that in our careers as technologists it go from the infrastructure being the blocker to the idea people and the dreamers not being able to utilize the infrastructure and it just flipped in 24 months.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So interesting because we did have startups who were like, I don't think I can do that and do that means some function. Store this many videos. Let people do this many queries, et cetera. Again, 12 months ago, 24 months ago. And that question has stopped when they come talk to their investors.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is pretty crazy. I want to talk, you know, brass tacks on pricing and costs. We're obviously seeing a lot of people standing up a lot of hardware and a lot of compute. How is the pricing dropping for the simple tasks that this hardware can kind of do queries, can do deep research? It seems like it's, I don't know what percentage the cost has dropped each of the last, say, two years. And then where you expect it to drop over the next two. But for things like storage, it seemed like storage would drop 5% a year. Sometimes 10. It wasn't like some incredible pace where you went from a one terabyte hard drive to a 50 terabyte hard drive. In fact, that doesn't exist as a concept yet. I think maybe we're up to 14 terabytes. I don't know. People stop counting, which is a good indicator of.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cloud computing came out. People started working remote. There were more developers. But still, developers became the blocker very quickly after people, we had cloud computing. Are we going to see what happened with racking and stacking servers as the blocker, you know, then the blocker became the talent, the developers? Is that blocker going away? Do you believe in this vibe coding moment where the 96% of humans who don't write code, some percentage of them are going to be able to write code or speak English and have code written? Is that actually going to happen and to what extent”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's take a little detour here into development startups have been constrained by a couple of things over the last couple of decades. And I've been investing in them for just over a decade, but was building them and reporting on them before that. And in the early days, getting the money together, three, four, five million dollars to launch a product and time. These were blockers. It took three or four million dollars and call it 18, 24 months to get your product to market.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What are you seeing from startups, right? This massive amount of infrastructure that's being belt out of blistering pace. In some cases, what we used to do commodity hardware, now we're doing sort of premium hardware, but it'll become commoditized again, I assume. What kind of jobs are people throwing at the hardware now? And are there instances where they're overwhelming it or otherwise hitting a breaking point? Because I haven't heard from any startups. The bottleneck is now. Infrastructure and availability. That was like the discussion 12 months ago. And now I don't hear it anymore.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now it's just boom. It just shows up. The entire thousand words just appears on your screen instantly, which is kind of mind-blowing. But when we do these deep researches, you're watching it work and it's working in parallel. It's putting everything together. It might take a couple of minutes. And now there's this really neat feature where it's like, hey, we're working on it. We're going to send you an alert, which I think is just awesome, like a great little user feature there. So talk to me about inference, how that's changed in just the last 18 months, and then maybe we put our binoculars on here and where it will be in 18 months.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So a lot of the power now is making its way into inference for folks who don't know you're using a lot of the infrastructure to build a model. Okay, people are building models all over the place. You can go on hugging face. You can see all the incredible activity there. But inference, being able to process queries faster and faster in real time, how is that changed just in the last year or two? And then, how will that change in the next year or two? Because You know, we were sitting here, I don't know, it was 18 months ago, and back to bandwidth, it was writing a response, I'm moving my fingers slowly across the screen. Left to right, like you know, we haven't had that experience since dial up modems.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Comprehend how to take this amount of compute, the amount of data storage, and the bandwidth we have available now, and turn that into a product. Is there like an exercise we can do to open our minds to these possibilities?”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have infinite bandwidth and infinite storage in the 80s or 90s. Minds probably wouldn't be able to comprehend that. So let's think about how this data moves around, how quickly it moves around. We know now that we're talking about thousands and thousands of what would be web servers at your disposal, answering queries. How should a developer or even a founder who's a quote unquote idea person”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow. So let's talk about how that data moves. I think this will inform what founders will think about building. So I'm trying to sort of open up their minds a little bit of just what's capable today. We'll get into what's going to be. We'll be capable of next year, and maybe in two or three years, so we can skate to where the puck is going. But this is kind of mind-blowing how much compute you can put to work at such an affordable level that it's almost like when you and I started our career, we were talking pre-show about floppy disks and stuff like that. If somebody told you”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's going on in the background on the hardware layer going through? I think what is the largest cluster of computers ever assembled, which is Google's Cloud.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Last night, I had my high fidelity headphones on. I was listening to some groovy music, and I was like, tell me more artists like Bob Dylan and Mark Noffler. Give me an analysis by decade. And I realized I had sent Google Gemini's deep research to do essentially what would have been like a PhD, you know, thesis. And it returned it And I would have never known about this music. My God, the joy that that gave me finding new artists. And this is a silly example. But when I clicked on show your work and I watched it work, I was astounded at how many threads were fired at once. So I want to help people conceptualize when you do a deep research and you switch your model to something like that.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Welcome back to another episode of AI Basics brought to you in partnership with our friends at Google Cloud, Google Cloud just published a fantastic report. It's called The Future of AI Perspectives for Startups. It features insights from 23 leading AI experts and today on the program. We're delighted to have Amin Vidat, his VPN GM of Machine Learning and Cloud AI over at Google Cloud. Amin Vidat has worked on scaling the internet for decades. We're going to talk today about TPU's GPUs, just how the infrastructure is scaling. I mean, but I wanted to do it from the application layer backwards.”
2025-05-01 · This Week in Startups · What's Next for AI Infrastructure with Amin Vahdat | AI Basics with Google Cloud · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source