In the past, technology platforms have given birth to generational companies. The advent of the internet gave us Google, Amazon and Airbnb. The cloud technology provided the basis for Dropbox and Netflix. Mobile phones brought us Uber, TikTok, and WhatsApp.
What about crypto? We thought we could do everything on blockchains.
Cryptocurrencies rose spectacularly, but still only trade on theoretical future value. For now, it seems that most problems can be solved well enough on existing technology platforms, and doing something on the blockchain doesn’t provide enough additional value.
Is GenAI a different story?
The hype about GenAI is immense right now, but we have reasons to believe that it is grounded in a real shift. GenAI increases productivity, and we have promising empirical data to back this claim. Earnings and employment rates of freelancers like copywriters and designers have already been negatively affected by the release of AI tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Consultants assisted by AI carry out complex tasks 25% faster, complete 12% more tasks and score 40% better on quality than their non-assisted peers. Software developers using AI copilots need 55% less time to complete tasks.
While these numbers are already impressive, the change is only incremental, yet. The question is: Will new generational companies be built on the base of GenAI?
The answer is: likely yes. GenAI drastically reduces the cost of generating possibilities: not just texts, videos, and images, but also layouts of new cities, molecule designs for novel drugs or a combination of ingredients for new perfumes. Besides augmenting productivity in many fields, GenAI also democratizes access to domains that were bastions of engineers or professional creators. By reducing the friction of interacting with machines (no-code, prompting, etc.), AI tools could empower a new wave of creators of games, films, and other formats. Some of the best talents in the world are now playing with GenAI. The next big company leveraging it might already exist.
Julien Pache is a partner at the Zurich-based Verve Ventures since 2012. He has been building up the firm as part of the management and led the investment team for almost 5 years. He also managed Verve’s CVC mandates to invest in fin-tech and SaaS companies. In 2019, Julien joined Verve’s portfolio company Bring! as CCO. At Bring!, he led revenue growth, business development and strategy. In 2021, Julien came back to Verve Ventures as a Venture Partner. Julien holds a MA in Law from the University of Fribourg and spends his spare time on philosophy, gardening and doing sports in the mountains. Everything AI is among Julien’s top interests.
