Hilbert: a16z $28M Bet on an AI That Can't Do Math | Nazli Tan

How so? What do you think that shows more?

Yeah, I think just to make it clear, set theory is a foundation, like basically we define it as like foundations of math.

You know, if you just see anyone like engineer or whatever, when you ask like what would be the elemental unit of math, they would probably say you numbers.

When you ask a mathematician, they should tell you sets.

The reason is that even if you, the numbers that you're seeing are defined by sets, the whole history, and also this is tied to why our company is named Hilbert, It says in 1900s, there is this period called foundational crisis of math.

And which is like, of course, math existed many years ago.

But during that time, there's like a group of mathematicians, logicians are start writing like paradoxes, contradictions with the very math that we're trusting and just like building.

And in that time, like there's a period where everybody's like, oh, we're trusting this.

Like, what are we going to do right now? And there's like a serial of attempts to basically save the practice and just like bring back the trust.

Because it's just like before that, it's like prove or give a counter

example.

Yeah,

it's like we were thinking is prove or give a counter example.

What's happening, guys? You know, it's just

like.

And that period is where one of the first attempts belongs to David Hilbert.

He's starting something called Hilbert's Program.

And that was the original name of our company when we were raising pre-seeds.

Because I was just like, growth is a practice.

I'm seeing growth in a way that it's not like I want to grow my company three points faster.

I'm

seeing growth as the foundational reason, the main reason of why something even called company exists.

Because it's just like when you really learn growth, you're just seeing that a company by its nature is just like, a diminishing thing because it's just like the market will just like you know like basically it's just like you will like tap out the majority of it retention is something that naturally decreases it's just like you need to just even keep it like the natural

state is decreasing

exactly even like competition will start like everything and again it's just like even in the channels that we acquire and everything people are thinking if they're not coming from the practice they are like stable costs and everything no like banana you buy is getting expensive like everything ads inventory is also getting expensive so it's kind of like uh even if uh you're not aspired to do a lot of different things you need to just make sure even stabilizing yourself is an effort so i'm like it's actually kind of the foundations of business right this is my favorite question recently that i'm asking in the calls i'm like uh would you be betting with your company's one year revenue that you know what works what's not working in your company like everything i never get a yes um because fundamentally we don't right it's just like what we are thinking is that what we have told right now is just like there are some metrics they're measuring stuff they need to go from a to b Then it's just like, you supply chain, move this thing from A to B.