Sahil Lavingia: Founding Gumroad, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, and our AI LLM future

Manifold | Sahil Lavingia: Founding Gumroad, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, and our AI LLM future — #27 @ManifoldPodcast | Uploaded January 2023 | Updated October 2024, 15 hours ago.
Sahil Lavingia founded Gumroad at the age of 19 and built it into a leading digital commerce platform. He is the author of The Minimalist Entrepreneur and an investor in early-stage startups.

Steve and Sahil discuss:

0:00 Sahil's upbringing and start as an entrepreneur
9:35 Tech founder at 19 and VC investment from Kleiner-Perkins
24:15 Backstory of Gumroad
30:30 Crowdfunding Gumroad
37:09 Experiments with OpenAI LLM, ChatGPT, and the promise of AI

References:

Sahil's web page
sahillavingia.com

Ask My Book: interrogate Sahil's book via LLM
askmybook.com

–
Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU.

Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on Twitter twitter.com/@hsu_steve.

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$Discovering the Multiverse: Quantum Mechanics and Hugh Everett III, with Peter Byrne — #22 Peter Byrne is an investigative reporter and science writer based in Northern California. His popular biography, The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III - Multiple Universes, Mutual Assured Destruction, and the Meltdown of a Nuclear Family (Oxford University Press, 2010) was followed by publication of The Everett Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Collected Works 1957-1980, (Princeton University Press, 2012), co-edited with philosopher of science Jeffrey A. Barrett of UC Irvine. Everetts formulation of quantum mechanics, which implies the existence of a quantum multiverse, is favored by a significant (and growing) fraction of working physicists. Steve and Peter discuss: 0:00 How Peter Byrne came to write a biography of Hugh Everett 18:09 Everett’s personal life and groundbreaking thesis as a catalyst for the book 24:00 Everett and Decoherence 31:25 Reaction of other physicists to Everett’s many worlds theory 40:46 Steve’s take on Everett’s many worlds theory 43:41 Peter on the bifurcation of science and philosophy 49:21 Everett’s post-academic life 52:58 How Hugh Everett is remembered now References: Many Worlds posts on Infoproc: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/search/label/many%20worlds Conversations with Dieter Zeh: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/04/feynman-and-everett.html Macroscopic Superpositions in Isolated Systems: https://infoproc.blogspot.com/2021/06/macroscopic-superpositions-in-isolated.html Music used with permission from Blade Runner Blues Livestream improvisation by State Azure. – Steve Hsu is Professor of Theoretical Physics and of Computational Mathematics, Science, and Engineering at Michigan State University. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation at MSU and Director of the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. Hsu is a startup founder (SafeWeb, Genomic Prediction, Othram) and advisor to venture capital and other investment firms. He was educated at Caltech and Berkeley, was a Harvard Junior Fellow, and has held faculty positions at Yale, the University of Oregon, and MSU. Please send any questions or suggestions to manifold1podcast@gmail.com or Steve on Twitter at https://twitter.com/hsu_steve.$