BobbyBe,
I agree with most of your points.
I found Lightspeed confusing and difficult to understand. I was in it, then out of it, then back in it and unfortunately, still in it when they reported last quarter. Now I’m out of it never to return. I admit, I held a position in Lightspeed largely due to herd mentality - even though I found it difficult to understand, I figured with virtually all of the highly regarded members of this community holding a position, I didn’t have to have good grasp of the business.
That was misguided. I will endeavor to avoid that mistake in the future. If I really can’t follow it, I will trust my instincts rather than the actions of others. Saul continuously reminds us to do our own analysis. I got soft on this one. I got what I deserved.
OTOH, I had no trouble understanding AMPL, fortunately I kept my position quite small, but it was large enough for this market action to be painful. Oh well. At least I knew what I was getting into. And my position size was a reflection of my confidence level, pretty low.
MDB is another disappointment. I exited long ago, but it was with reluctance. I’m old enough to have watched Oracle start from nothing and grow into the dominant relational DBMS that it was (still is?). I was in IT at Boeing and watched its penetration and yet never invested in it. I saw MDB as playing the same movie for a different category of DBMS. The problem was that their performance as a business entity never achieved hypergrowth. MDB may eventually dominate it’s space, but that in and of itself doesn’t make it a good investment.
But with that said, I disagree with you about Upstart. I think it already is a category crusher destined to be a giant in an enormous market. CEO Dave Girouard spent several years at Google. He was president of Google Enterprise which was the part of the company responsible for delivering GCP apps worldwide. In the most recent quarterly conference call he even likened Upstart to Google, Apple and Amazon. Every would be competitor is playing catch up in a space where time is one of the primary ingredients demanded by the development cycle. While others are just taking a position at the starting blocks Upstart is already way ahead and gaining momentum.
I know, some folks think Chase, BofA, CITI, etc. will roll their own. Maybe, but I doubt it. It’s easier, cheaper and more efficient to partner with Upstart and let them focus on their core competence, the risk assessment technology while the banks adhere to their own core competence which is money management. IMO, Upstart already is the category crusher in AI/ML risk assessment lending space. But I could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time . . .