Here are the highlights from the podcast episode. You can find a longer form analysis on both topics in the podcast episode - Spotify | Apple Podcasts.
The podcast follows the same core principles as the writing (primarily analysis driven with occasional opinions sprinkled in). Just reply to the email if you have any feedback or topic suggestions.
Podcast episode summary
Reddit’s IPO filing
The company filed to go public at a valuation of ~$5B per their S-1 filing
For folks who are not big Reddit users, what makes the product unique is an incredible number of very specific subreddits that bring together people interested in niche topics (eg. r/podcasting, r/HealthyFood, r/Letterkenny, r/AskSF)
Reddit reported strong +20% year over year user growth in 2023 with 73M daily active users and 267M weekly active users, but it remains to be seen whether they can expand themselves beyond a “niche” audience that has been typically attracted to Reddit
Most of their $804M in annual 2023 revenue (+21% year over year) comes from advertising; their ads product is relatively early in maturity compared to competitors, which means there is clearly room for improving the product through technical levers (like better ad targeting, using contextual signals, etc.)
Reddit also has an advantage being a contextual ads product in the midst of major privacy-related changes from both Apple and Google; however, other text based platforms (like Twitter) have not recently succeeded in having engaging ads despite high volume of user engagement, which is a meaningful business risk
This could partially explain Reddit’s push towards their data licensing efforts, which is expected to generate $200M in revenue over the next 3 years; this is a smart move given their data is already used by several large language models for training without consent, but it’s to be seen whether this is a good long-term move for the company (vs building their own chatGPT-like search experience)
India's AI Regulation
India announced controversial regulation requiring all AI models and applications to go through government approval
This applies to both model providers (like openAI when they launch a new version of the GPT model) and applications (like an app built using GPT model)
This regulation comes in the midst of an election year and a political landscape that has been increasing control over free press by the ruling party
The reasons behind the regulation are primarily framed as limiting election interference, which is reasonable given the impact misinformation has had in Asia, particularly through forwarded messages on WhatsApp (Facebook came under fire for a similar issue in Myanmar); however, the breadth of the regulation is sweeping
India’s approach to tech regulation in the past has been brute force (TikTok is banned in India, Google Play Store was forced to reverse a ban on major Indian apps) but effective
The new regulation only applies to “significant platforms“ and not startups, with the intended outcome of minimizing election interference while not harming innovation
The misinformation risk however is not necessarily created by large platforms (these usually have higher trust & safety standards); for example, the Biden deepfake robocall in the US was produced using a startup’s product, and this product in India would have not been part of the new regulation
Check out the podcast episode for the full analysis - Spotify | Apple Podcasts. See you next week!
Reddit's IPO Filing & India's AI Regulation | EP 7