OpenAI DevDay: Beyond the Headlines with Logan Kilpatrick, OpenAI's Dev Relations Lead

**Erik Torenberg** (0:00)
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**Nathan Labenz** (0:45)
How many startups do you think you guys killed yesterday?

**Logan Kilpatrick** (0:48)
There's so much opportunity for startups being created, and I think the reality is if your startup was a super, super thin wrap around something, you didn't really have a startup, you just had some project that you were working on that was building off of an API. My takeaway from yesterday is the barrier to entry for new startups and for people to build extremely compelling products has never been lower, and there's never been more amazing technology to build with. I think we probably created thousands and thousands of new startups.
If you take a step back, if you're a venture backed, or even if you are later series, ABC, whatever it is, and have raised enough money to do this and have cash, it actually makes a lot of sense.
This is an opportunity to truly build a defensible business. You can have a model that's trained on, I think, in order of billions of tokens, which is not something that anybody else has access to, and again, it requires a sufficient investment to make that happen. But I do think that this is what people have been asking us for. How can we build a defensible business using your products and services?

**Nathan Labenz** (1:54)
Hello, and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs, and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence.
Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together, we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life, and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host, Erik Torenberg. Logan Kilpatrick from OpenAI, welcome to The Cognitive Revolution.

**Logan Kilpatrick** (2:20)
How's it going, Nathan? I'm excited to be here.

**Nathan Labenz** (2:22)
It is an exciting time. You guys have just launched a whole smorgasbord of stuff at OpenAI, and so congratulations on that, and thanks for taking a little time to dig into the details and all the little nuances of it with us. I wanted to start with a couple of big picture questions, and then really get into the weeds. So, starters, obviously, going into yesterday's event, the sort of memesphere and certainly coming out of it too was like, how many startups is OpenAI going to kill with this release?
So, kind of a tongue-in-cheek starter question, but if you had to put a number on it, how many startups do you think you guys killed yesterday?

**Logan Kilpatrick** (2:58)
I've been seeing this trend on Twitter, and I get such a visceral negative reaction to it. I really do think there's so much opportunity for startups being created, and I think the reality is, if your startup was a super, super thin wrap around something, you didn't really have a startup. You just had some project that you were working on that was building off of an API. And of course, as things change, you'll be disrupted in some capacity. True, genuine startups are thinking about, from the ground floor, how do I build a defensible business? And you have to go and build an innovative product to do that.
So my takeaway from yesterday is the barrier to entry for new startups and for people to build extremely compelling products has never been lower. And there's never been more amazing technology to build with. I think we probably created thousands and thousands of new startups and gave the ones who are building on our platform today lower prices, a ton of new features, they can go and compete with other big companies. So I'm really excited and I think there's never been a better time to build something cool using AI.

**Nathan Labenz** (4:07)
Yeah, well, no doubt about that. So we're going to get into all the tools. Just another kind of angle on that same sort of question. It does seem like there is a bit of a shift where, you know, not even a year ago yet. And it's crazy to think about, right? Chad GPT, I understand, was kind of motivated at OpenAI by this sense that, like, hey, these models are getting pretty good, but we're not seeing kind of the traction or the sort of everyday use that we would expect to see or hope to see. So, like, let's put a product out there and try to kind of kickstart that. That obviously really worked. And now this year later, it seems like there's a bit of a shift toward more of an Apple-like, not-first-but-best, maybe you could say, kind of product direction where, you know, the community has been out there kind of exploring all these things of rag and, you know, agent frameworks and all that stuff.