Jean-Denis “JD” Grèze is the Co-Founder and CEO of Town, the AI work assistant reportedly in talks to raise funding at a $1BN valuation. Before founding Town, JD spent seven years as CTO of Plaid. Before Plaid, he was Director of Engineering at Dropbox. He is also a prolific angel investor backing companies including Modal, BaseTen, Merge and NexHealth.
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Timestamps:
00:00 – Intro
02:08 – Why Town Pivoted From AI Tax to AI Assistants
04:09 – Can Town Survive Google, Apple and OpenAI?
06:14 – Why AI Assistants Could Have Network Effects
08:48 – Will Everyone Have One AI Agent or Many?
11:01 – Will We Trust AI Agents With Our Private Data?
17:16 – Are Goal-Seeking AI Agents a Feature or a Bug?
19:30 – How Town Chooses Between OpenAI, Anthropic and Open Models
22:33 – Can AI Assistant Economics Ever Reach SaaS Margins?
25:05 – Open Models vs Frontier Models: Who Gets the Workloads?
29:56 – How Should VCs Invest in the AI Assistant Race?
33:45 – Why AI Startups Can No Longer Outrun Their Competitors
39:31 – Why Apple Could Lose the AI Assistant Race
41:50 – Are AI Agents Creating a Cybersecurity Time Bomb?
43:42 – Why Token Maxing Is the Wrong AI Metric
47:46 – Consumer vs Enterprise AI: Where Does the Bigger Business Get Built?
50:06 – Is ElevenLabs Worth $22BN?
51:57 – The Biggest Risk to AI Assistant Margins
01:00:01 – Is the AI Assistant Hype Justified?
01:03:41 – Quick-Fire Round
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