Founder Reality by George Pu

I didn't want to do this

Last week I made some of our repositories private. I'm an open-source founder. It's the decision I've felt worst about all year, and here is the whole of why. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → What I Stopped Publishing The decision Last week I made some of our repositories private. I didn't want to. I still don't. Not all of them. We publish our models, weights and all, and most of our code is still public. That part isn't changing. But a handful of repos that used...

10 days ago • 4 min read

I did the math at 1am: we have no moat

Building is free now. That killed our moat - and it turned out to be the most freeing thing I know. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → The Week I Found Out We Have No Moat It started with a simple question I went down a rabbit hole this week and came out a little shaken, then weirdly calm. Here is the honest version. It started with the one question every founder is supposed to have an answer to. What is our moat. I went looking for ours, and day by day I watched it...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

Six months ago I asked AI what to do. Now I tell it.

A reflection on the five layers, six months on - identity, relationships, stakes, selection, and the one thing I guard above the work. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → Six Months After My Post-AI Manifesto Six months ago, I posted my post-AI manifesto. It was meant to lay out what I'd do - and what I'd suggest anyone do - to stay ahead of AI, to thrive despite it, back when everything around us was uncertainty. Now, six months later, the uncertainty has faded....

about 2 months ago • 4 min read

I killed our product strategy in a weekend

We're an AI model company. This weekend I took our own models off our own app - here's the $31 receipt that made me do it. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → The Day I Killed Our Product Strategy This weekend, on a Sunday, I took our own AI models off our own app and replaced them with a competitor's. We're an AI model company. Or we were. This is the story of how that decision happened in 24 hours - the four days before it, what it cost me to see it, and what I...

about 2 months ago • 3 min read

I made you something. And it's yours to keep.

Free, private, and yours to keep. I wanted you to have it first. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → Meet Vinci Hey - I've been waiting a long time to send you this. For a while I've been building toward one idea - that you deserve an AI that's actually yours. Not rented. Not watching you. Not telling you what you want to hear. Today it's real. And I wanted you to have it first. It's called Vinci. The first model - piccolo - is live right now. Free. No limits. Here's...

2 months ago • 2 min read

I got locked out of frontier AI. It cost $4.

I Got Locked Out of Frontier AI. It Cost Me $4. Washington cut me off from Anthropic's best model. Replacing it cost four dollars - and broke my own thesis. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → I Got Locked Out of Frontier AI. It Cost Me $4. The export control that proved my own thesis - and exposed the hole in it. Last Friday the US government decided I wasn't allowed to use the most powerful AI model on the market. Not me specifically. But me, functionally. I'm a...

3 months ago • 5 min read

Anthropic just proved you're only renting AI

The Day the Frontier Got Pulled Fable 5 and Mythos 5 are gone, and the lesson is simple: own your stack or be owned. Founder Reality by George Pu Forwarded this? Subscribe free → The Day the Frontier Got Pulled The landlord's landlord pulled the plug I coded for seven hours with Fable 5 on a new personal project last Thursday. It felt productive. It felt like the future. Then Anthropic got a letter from the US government at 5:21 p.m. ET on Friday, and by the weekend Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were...

3 months ago • 5 min read