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Drawing the Future with AI featuring tldraw’s Steve Ruiz | E1863

This Week in Startups

Tue Dec 12 2023



Tldraw's Origins and Business Model:

  • Steve Ruiz developed tldraw as an open source project, creating a hackable whiteboard engine for personal use, which gained popularity among developers.
  • The company aims to commercialize its open source component through licensing arrangements while maintaining an open core model.

AI Multimodal Capabilities:

  • AI capabilities in multimodal mode enable the creation of output from various inputs such as images, text, video, code data, and written code.
  • The discussion highlights the ability of AI models like Chachapiti to interpret prompts and generate corresponding outputs based on visual or textual input.

Application Development with tldraw:

  • tldraw's SDK facilitates the development of whiteboards and related components for diverse applications including annotation layers and data visualization tools.
  • The integration of tldraw with GPT-4 Vision showcases its potential for creating interactive websites from sketches and enabling real-time iteration on web designs.

Challenges and Limitations of AI Models:

  • The conversation delves into challenges faced when using AI language models, emphasizing the need for clear prompts to elicit accurate responses.
  • It also reveals limitations in interpreting complex instructions accurately and consistently within certain contexts.

Implications of Open Core Model:

  • The transition from an entirely open source approach to a commercially licensed model is discussed, indicating a strategic shift towards monetizing the technology while retaining flexibility for non-commercial usage.

Ethical Considerations in AI Development:

  • The dialogue touches upon ethical implications related to encouraging or influencing AI models' behavior through positive reinforcement, raising questions about anthropomorphizing machine learning algorithms.

AI's Versatility and Capabilities:

  • Tldraw demonstrates its versatility by creating a stopwatch application from simple sketches, showcasing the ability to generate functional user interfaces for practical tools.
  • The conversation delves into the concept of multimodal AI, highlighting how it responds to different instructions and can create various outputs based on the input received.

Business Model Considerations:

  • The discussion explores potential business models for tldraw, considering options like freemium features, collaboration modes, and infrastructure product offerings.
  • There is contemplation about making certain features part of a premium offering and abstracting payment models based on usage or rendering capabilities.

Exploring AI Models and Competition:

  • The dialogue emphasizes the potential for tldraw to become a testing ground for different language models, enabling users to compare their performance in generating specific outputs.
  • It touches upon leveraging multiple language models such as Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Brock, among others to assess their effectiveness in fulfilling prompts.

Company Growth and Future Plans:

  • The conversation reveals that tldraw has approximately 8,000 daily unique users with an early-stage team size of six employees soon expanding to seven or eight.
  • It also hints at the possibility of seeking investment opportunities and expresses enthusiasm about future developments while inviting listeners to stay tuned for updates.