DevToolsDigest: Issue #281

The Week in Developer Tools

Foundation Models will Kill the Traditional Moat of ML Applications. What New Ones will Emerge?

ML companies have typically built a business with their model as a moat. Create a product, collect data, improve the model, repeat. With this flywheel, competitors can never catch up. Companies building LLM applications will not be able to create truly defensible models.

From Prompt Engineering to Flow Engineering

Code generation problems differ from common natural language problems – they require matching the exact syntax of the target language, identifying happy paths and edge cases, paying attention to numerous small details in the problem spec, and addressing other code-specific issues and requirements.

Industry Research

Sell the Product Before It Exists

Most founders are technical. Through some lived experience, they have discovered something that could be improved with their new technology. Engineers are trained, in school and in work experience, to be very precise and accurate. Unfortunately, this experience really serves them very wrongly when they find themselves suddenly in a sales role.

Developer Venture News

Welcome Back to the Unicorn Club, 10 Years Later

Aileen Lee famously coined the term “unicorn” to describe tech companies with billion-dollar valuations back in 2013. In a blog post celebrating the 10th birthday of her famous term, she writes that 40% of the 532 U.S. unicorns are trading at valuations below $1 billion in the secondary markets.

30 of the Most Successful Early-Stage Startup Investors

There are around 300,000 active angel investors, but who are the best of the best? In an industry full of marketing and hype where investments take over a decade to bear fruit, it can be hard to tell.