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Show HN: Parrot.vc – I forced a bot to read 65,000 VC tweets and it became a VC

263 points| nloui | 6 years ago |parrot.vc | reply

132 comments

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[+] dondudu|6 years ago|reply
> Income inequality is an enormous problem. What do you use it for?

... this is amazing.

[+] other_herbert|6 years ago|reply
"Maybe in some niche B2B fields I don't know your people just randomly die in your house while you are there."

I hope these weren't related

[+] nloui|6 years ago|reply
Parrot.vc is a bot trained on tens of thousands of VC tweets that uses predictive text to generate amazing, new startup advice. Share your favorites!

Gavin Belson - hit me up, this is the perfect acquisition for Hooli.

PS - you can follow Parrot.vc on Twitter as well (https://twitter.com/parrot_vc)

[+] smacktoward|6 years ago|reply
Is the source code available anywhere? I’ve been mulling over a similar project but don’t have a lot of ML experience myself, would be great to look at the innards of a working example...
[+] tlrobinson|6 years ago|reply
Now do it with Hacker News comments!
[+] Bootwizard|6 years ago|reply
"With a powerful narrative, you should be able to go from raw materials to a launch ready vehicle in 60 days."

If this isn't the best sign of the times, idk what is.

Edit: This one killed me

"VC is hard. This is a great fucking deck..."

[+] theli0nheart|6 years ago|reply
Hmm, that's weird. I got the exact same phrases. Are these actually bot-generated in real-time or is the app just pulling from a set?
[+] haolez|6 years ago|reply
It’s not worth the money, but if you have a 79 year old parent on twitter, you can send me their handle as a guideline for him.
[+] nloui|6 years ago|reply
Hah that's pretty good
[+] corodra|6 years ago|reply
Okay, I've spent a little more time on this than I probably should have, but I think I realized something. The reason this works is mostly due to the VCs being generic in general. I've been reading the tweets they're based on and they're equally nonsense as the bot tweet. But bashing multiple tweets together, still produces something that's... coherent? I mean, yea, they're coherent. But it works because it lacks detail.

There's almost no detail or focus on a concrete idea in any of these VC tweets. Everything is so damn vague and abstract in the original tweets, they can apply to anything or anyone. Thus, chopping and mixing them is meaningless, because they are void of meaning to begin with... Sort of the same way horoscopes work. They're pretty broad and the reader fills in the gaps and details. VCs talk like old gypsy fortune tellers... they're vague, tell you roughly what you'd like to hear and are generally useless sacks of breathing meat...

Damn, that was a wild ride...

[+] pcmaffey|6 years ago|reply
VC is a pyramid scheme. A VC's entire focus is selling "a narrative" to other VCs, so they can push their portfolio companies' next round or raise their next fund.

Only a rare few treat their portfolio companies as customers and not the product.

[+] all_blue_chucks|6 years ago|reply
Probably because meaningless platitudes sound better than "the last company like this was sold for $20MM and we think we can duplicate that success for $10MM."

Honesty isn't usually inspiring.

[+] yjhoney|6 years ago|reply
Agreed. Most VCs are just that, useless sacks of breathing meat.

For that reason, I've avoided them. Even during parties, I (unfairly) dismiss someone the moment I find out they are a VC and just invested in ...(insert famous tech here)...

Based on personal experience, VCs are statistically more likely having a conversation with you thinking they are better than you the whole time (and therefore knows better).

Not all VCs are like that, but unfortunately most of them are. Greedy, prideful people have caused me a great deal of suffering in my life and most VCs are just that.

[+] mef|6 years ago|reply
Capital is in such oversupply that you have to lock down the system from yourself to credibly tell customers you won't screw them over.

https://www.parrot.vc/-Luq3q03hYSF0vm4mVUb

[+] mrtksn|6 years ago|reply
I think this means that there's so much capital out there that you can operate without any profit until you dominate the market, so your users will effectively be convinced that you are a saint. Just remember to lock down the system from yourself and don't say anything that can break this illusion.
[+] georgewsinger|6 years ago|reply
VC twitter is excruciatingly cringe. I cannot imagine giving equity to these virtue signaling parrots.* The worst offenders are the people who

- have never personally taken a company from zero to one (even worse: when they have internally taken a company from 1 to N, and think that qualifies them).

- have a huge portfolio full of incremental companies

- constantly talk about trends on Twitter

- constantly talk about politics on Twitter

- are not currently operating their own moonshot/Unicorn

- are a bit too ridiculous when trying to hide their own greed

- talk constantly about the importance of "mentoring" you, when really just wanting access to your company

- have never actually taken a hard stand/risk on anything in their entire lives

Imagine instead getting a small check from Elon Musk when he was operating at Tesla/SpaceX, or even from then-no-name Sam Altman when he was running Loopt (as Stripe did from both). These investors are great because you know they're going to soon step the fuck out of your way and focus on their own projects. They might also be able to actually help you when you need it (both parties respecting each other's scarce time).

* Exceptions: PG, Naval, and part-time VC partners that actively operate their own companies.

[+] smt88|6 years ago|reply
> have never personally taken a company from zero to one

I've met quite a few angels and VCs who have exactly one successful exit on their resume. Without more exits, the overwhelming likelihood is that the exit was luck.

Like most humans, they fail to see the luck in their success and believe they know something about business that other people don't. They rely heavily on their experience and push their portfolio companies to make the same decisions they made.

It's possible there's no formula for a great VC, and incentive structures make it unlikely that talented, visionary, humble people are in that role. If you know how to build things, why be a VC instead of building things?

[+] slap|6 years ago|reply
The quoted long lines are unreadable on mobile unfortunately
[+] whalesalad|6 years ago|reply
I clicked through like 15 of these and they were all pretty nonsensical. Not sure if this is more damning of tweets from VC's or the bot itself...
[+] nloui|6 years ago|reply
Haha I'm sure it's somewhere in the middle. Never said it was the smartest algorithm. If you hover over the VC's name, it'll show the actual tweet that was sampled.
[+] calmworm|6 years ago|reply
Agreed - nonsense. It appears to just be copying segments of tweets and matching words to join the phrases at that word.
[+] barkingcat|6 years ago|reply
It's damning of VC's. Most VC tweets pretty much look like that.
[+] hayleox|6 years ago|reply
"Thinking about diversity in terms of ethnicity, gender, and/or education status, you are leaving money on the table."

Perfection.

[+] rc-1140|6 years ago|reply
"Canceling sneaky charges is one of the most predictable but consequential developments of the 2020s"[0]

Instantly reminded of all of the posts about ISPs and cellular carriers tacking on all sorts of goofy fees and their usual monetary "practices", felt it was especially relevant now that some of those fees are being exposed as being BS surcharges anyway. Can't name any sources off the top of my head but there was an article here on HN about it some months ago.

[0] https://www.parrot.vc/-Lv6SAuk6w0OJpbhw22_

[+] nloui|6 years ago|reply
Ugh my relationship with Spectrum
[+] JakeWesorick|6 years ago|reply
It looks like it uses tweets that were a reply to another tweet. This makes some of them read weird since there is missing context. I wonder what it would look like if it only used tweets that were original.
[+] nloui|6 years ago|reply
Hmmm I hadn't thought of that. That's a great point.
[+] corodra|6 years ago|reply
Great, congrates, sounds like your bot is going to be the first computer program to demand worker's rights and protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

But seriously wanted to say it's pretty stellar and so far none of these seem "bot" like. They read pretty genuine... which says a lot of how idiotic a lot of these VCs are.

[+] madisonmay|6 years ago|reply
@nloui any chance you're willing to share your dataset? Would be fun to replicate this with GPT-2 fine-tuning instead of a Markov chain.
[+] nloui|6 years ago|reply
Sure, I should be able to throw it onto a repo later.
[+] superasn|6 years ago|reply
> "the bear is sticky with honey"

If you don't understand the tweets, it's because they have a deeper meaning.

[+] elamje|6 years ago|reply
“My long-promised current view of what I want to be remembered, the guy who invented the crapper rule.”

... A rogue philosopher VC

“There’s nothing lean about spending 12-18 mo working hard to make a lot of money.“

[+] wtracy|6 years ago|reply
Most of the ones I got looked like they were generated from replies to other tweets. The lack of context made them boring, even if that makes it easier to make them comprehensible. (I would love to see this experiment run on a dataset that filtered out reply tweets.)

But then, it have me this gem:

"It's sad when people don't understand the value of a program that targets them. I mean I do see the value, I just don't like floppy pizza."