The particularly interesting thing about the Instinct conversation is just how emblematic it is of the groupthink endemic in tech and venture. Instinct is, clearly, a product most people would like to see work. It works.. ok.. right now. But it's a easily inferior for most tasks people will use it for relative to other products that have existed for months. It's attacking a likely huge market, but also there obviously isn't a technical moat or network effect that makes this hard to copy, which I expect means it will become highly fragmented and distribution will reign supreme. With the right context it can be highly sticky and monetizable, but that stickiness will translate only to the power users and not the average or median user who will use it primarily to do things like make reservations, appointments, scheduling, etc - for those people it will matter more who they have the most affinity with (it won't be a number or whatsapp chat). The more complex tasks are not things that 90%+ of people will use or care about within even a venture timeframe. And it has zero users today who are not highly online, SF/NYC elites with a lot of curiosity and little product loyalty. I haven't met the founder but i'm sure everything everyone says about him is true, and he's played this marketing game (for VC attention) masterfully. But the demand for the venture rounds at those prices and the undiscerning fawning of the product as a visionary breakthrough shows how the incentives push so many of us to think that 1) being in the in crowd (through deals, conversation, etc) is what matters most and 2) bunching into "kingmade" deals at any price is an easier or better way to win this game vs. finding alpha. Everyone clearly learned that from OpenAI/Anthropic, but seems obvious to me that won't translate to consumer and enterprise products that sit on top of these models. Instinct may end up being a humongous winner and consumer tech giant, but currently it feels to me like more of a lesson in human psychology.