Maven takes the clout-chasing out of social media as Reddit teams up with OpenAI

Last week was a big one for AI news, and one thing that stood out to us was OpenAI's deal with Reddit. Per the terms of the deal, OpenAI will get to use content from Reddit like posts and replies to train its AI, and Reddit will get access to some unspecified AI tools. Reddit's stock soared 11% in extended trading following the news. That's not all we talked about on today's episode of Equity. This morning, Rebecca Bellan also walked us through a new social media platform called Maven that wants to do away with likes, followers and clout-chasing in favor of more serendipitous internet exploration. Maven was co-founded by OpenAI alum Kenneth Stanley and is backed by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams. Speaking of Twitter, X.com is officially live as a platform. Annoyingly for Elon Musk, so is Twitter.com. Bellan also covered some fresh cybersecurity consolidation. Israeli security firm CyberArk has purchased Venafi out from Thoma Bravo for $1.54 billion -- that's $1 billion in cash and the rest in shares. Before you go, don't miss the latest Pitch Deck Teardown from Haje Kamps. In today's segment Haje digs deep on Berlin-based startup Goodcarbon's deck. The startup just raised a €5.25 million (around $5.5 million) seed round to make its mark on the big business of carbon credits, and its pitch deck does a great job at showing traction, but is not so great its team slide. Listen to the end to learn more! Equity is TechCrunch’s flagship podcast, produced by Theresa Loconsolo, and posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads at @EquityPod. For the full episode transcript, for those who prefer reading over listening, check out our full archive of episodes over at Simplecast. Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:11Rebecca Bellan?

  Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today is Monday, May 20th, and I'm Rebecca Balaun, a senior reporter on the Transportation Desk here at TechCrunch. Not to confuse you with my co-host, Becca Scootack, who you heard from last week. Becca and I will be tag teaming Monday's Equity podcast, but you can hear more from me and have the top tech news of the morning delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for the TechCrunch Daily Newsletter. On today's show, we have OpenAI teaming up with Reddit, a new social network backed by Twitter's ex-co-founder, more cybersecurity consolidation, and another pitch deck teardown from Hyatt Kemp's, this time for Berlin-based startup Good Carbon's deck. Let's get started.

• 0:53Rebecca Bellan?

  First story on our list, OpenAI has inked a deal to train its AI on Reddit data. Per OpenAI's blog post on the matter, the company will get access to, quote, "real-time, structured, and unique content from Reddit, aka posts and replies." In other words, ChatGPT is getting a window into one of the internet's more raw conversational forums. As part of the deal, Reddit users and moderators will get to access some unspecified new AI-powered features powered by OpenAI, and OpenAI will also become a Reddit advertising partner. According to TC's Kyle Wiggers, quote, "Reddit's platform, which has over 1 billion posts and more than 16 billion comments, figures that grow every day thanks to its hundreds of millions of active users, is a goldmine for

• 1:38Rebecca Bellan?

  generative AI companies, whose models learn from examples of content like text and images to generate new, similar content." While OpenAI has several similar licensing deals with content providers, what makes this one stand out is that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has an 8.7% stake in Reddit, making him the third-largest shareholder, so he stands to benefit from this deal. I'll note here that Altman is a member of Reddit's board, but he recused himself for this decision, according to an OpenAI spokesperson. Reddit, which went public in late February, saw its stock go up 11% in extended trading following the announcement of the OpenAI deal. Reddit is made of the voices of individuals who take the time to help others by replying and moderating content. So while Reddit

• 2:20Rebecca Bellan?

  stands to gain big bucks from this deal, what about the rest of us? And really, what I think we all want to know is, will ChatGPT soon be able to tell me if I am the asshole?

• 2:31Rebecca Bellan?

  Next up, we have Twitter co-founder Ev Williams is backing a new social network called Maven, reports Wired. Maven, which is co-founded by OpenAI alum Kenneth Stanley, aims to provide a healthier alternative to current platforms. So instead of incentivizing people to gather hordes of followers and likes and attention, Maven wants to create more serendipity in people's lives, allowing users to learn more and find connection on topics they follow, like computers or consciousness. The concept behind Maven is actually philosophical as well as technical. Stanley and a collaborator, Joel Lehman, in 2015, published a book called Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, that encourages people to seek serendipity in their everyday lives. So instead of optimizing for objectives like grades or salaries, which actually disincentivize

• 3:16Rebecca Bellan?

  exploration, the book places greater emphasis on social connections, which can lead to fun ideas that you never would have reached alone. How does that relate to Maven? Well, Maven is built around Stanley's concept of open-endedness. So instead of training an AI model to achieve a specific objective like driving a car without crashing, open-ended systems evolve and seek novelty for their own sake. When on the Maven app, you can find a bunch of topics you're into, like AI ethics or parenting. The platform doesn't show you the most popular posts, but rather ones that match your interests. Over the weekend, I asked Maven users why they came to the platform, and most of the early adopters say they were sick of the toxicity on today's social media platforms like X and Instagram and TikTok, all the clout chasing.

• 3:58Rebecca Bellan?

  They just wanted to go back to the early internet days of exploration and fun. Speaking of X, Maven's entrance comes on the heels of Twitter officially becoming X.com. Although, I don't know about the rest of you, but when I type in Twitter.com, Twitter.com is what continues to show up, so maybe they'll fix this soon. Before the pitch deck teardown, some quick news on a recent startup acquisition. CyberArk, one of the larger Israeli security companies, is acquiring Venefy, a specialist in machine identity. CyberArk is shelling out $1 billion in cash and another $540 million in shares for the company. Finity will see a moderate increase in valuation, which was last valued at 1.15 billion when private equity firm Toma Bravo bought it in 2020.

• 4:43Rebecca Bellan?

  CyberArk says the deal will expand its own total addressable market by $10 billion to a total of $60 billion, and the deal is expected to close in the second half of 2024. So why do we care? Well, the deal comes at a time when bigger companies are snapping up smaller ones in order to stay on top of the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. At the same time, these smaller companies are increasingly finding themselves in need of a cash cow, according to Ingrid London. Quote, "Some companies that raised money several years ago at higher valuations are finding those valuations under pressure as they variously fail to grow ARR or reach profitability and approach the predictable end of their runways." As regular listeners will know, we've been tracking the theme of consolidation in the broader startup ecosystem, so stay tuned for updates.

• 5:30Rebecca Bellan?

  That's it for me this morning, but keep an eye on TechCrunch for even more tech, startup and venture news. Now it's time for Pitch Deck Tear Down with TechCrunch reporter Haya Kamps. Take it away, Haya.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  Thank you, Rebecca. I'm Haya, and it's time for another Pitch Deck Tear Down. New installments drop every Friday, so if you want to read along, you can over on techcrunch.com. This week, we're looking at Good Carbon's deck. Good Carbon is a Berlin-based startup, and it raised 5.3 million euros, which is about 5.5 million dollars at today's exchange rate, to expand its carbon credit platform. The company offers a digital investment and trading platform for carbon credits, focusing on high-impact, nature-based solutions. Good Carbon collaborates with corporations to offset emissions and promotes conservation and restoration projects, which enhances their nature analytics and expertise. It's a really cool company going after a massive market, and for my Pitch Deck Tear Down series, I'm taking a closer look at what it did to raise its round.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  With all of that out of the way, let's get into what worked about Good Carbon's deck. Let's get started with the successes. For one, it did a great job of telling the story of its large and growing market. Telling a carbon company's story involves a degree of describing a future that everybody knows is coming, but nobody quite seems to know how fast. That's a massive challenge. The other challenge is the explosive growth of the cost of carbon credits. The company outlined the trend with a graph. Let's say it again, folks, graphs are your friends. It really helps things come to life. The other thing I really liked was the portfolio approach that the company uses. The problem, of course, is that carbon offsetting and buying credits is already pretty complicated, and risk balancing all of that is even harder. The company broke down their process of hedging against the price and volume risk,

• 7:09Speaker 01

  and more importantly, the reputational risk of investing in the wrong types of companies. Super clever. The bonus here is that VCs, of course, invest in portfolios as well. And so, speaking the portfolio language really helps this come to life for VCs. The third thing I loved about Good Carbon's deck is how they really lean into the social proof. They have a whole list of companies that are trusting in them to take care of their carbon credits. It really primes the pump for some reference calls that are definitely going to be coming, but it means that the company can really start helping investor co-dream about the size of the opportunity they're about to invest in. Sweet, well, that's quite enough praise for one day. Let's talk about why we're really here: the tough love. Here's three things that Good Carbon could have improved.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  For one thing, there is a ton of information missing. And a lot of the thing that's missing is actually connected, which makes the story really weak. It's unclear who the target customer is, which has a knock-on effect across the entire pitch. There's no go-to-market slide, which means we don't know how this company will find its customers and sell to them. But because we also don't know who the customers are, it's really hard to imagine a go-to-market model for this particular company. Gets worse. From there, there's no business model, and for that matter, also no pricing model. That means it's really hard to figure out how Good Carbon is going to make money, who it's selling to, and how much it will charge them. But no worries, maybe we can deduce all of that from their competitors. Oh, wait, they didn't include a competitive slide. Wah wah. On top of that, there's no mode or defendability,

• 8:38Speaker 01

  so we don't know at how much risk the company is of being taken down by their competitors. And it gets worse from there, there's no ask. So we don't know how much the company is raising. And most crucially, there's no use of fun slide, which means that we also don't know how the company is going to spend the money that they raise. Now, one of these omissions the company could get away with, but the combination makes me really worried. Either they left all of this info out of the deck on purpose, and I'll be like, which is why? They're left out by accident, which makes me wonder if these founders really know what they're doing. Honestly, it's pretty easy to avoid all of this. In fact, a while ago, I made a checklist on TechCrunch for what you need in your pitch deck. We'll make sure to drop a link to that in the show notes. The second issue is that the team slide isn't great. We talked about that last week, so I'm not going to go super in depth.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  But suffice it to say that I concluded that at least on paper, the team as presented on slide 17 doesn't strike me as a slam dunk of a team building a carbon credit company. That's a red flag. And finally, I just wish they would get to the point. Good Carbon could have cut a quarter of the pitch deck by condensing the 10 problem and solution slides into just two or three slides. Seriously, if an investor in this field doesn't already get the problem and the impact of climate change, they just won't invest in the first place. Stop wasting your breath, stop wasting your pixels, and cut to the chase. Cool? Cool. Let's recap. One, make sure that investors have all the info they're looking for. Use a checklist. Two, tell a great story that investors can really relate to.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Three, do find a narrative that shows why your team is a perfect fit. And finally, don't insult your investors by explaining things that they definitely already know. If they don't know these basics, you're talking to the wrong investors. All right, all right, all right. That's it for today's episode, but don't worry. Equity will be back on Wednesday. If you want to keep up with us in the meantime, you can follow Equity on X and Threads under the handle EquityPod. And I'm easy to find. I'm Hyer on X. Finally, finally, if you want me to lovingly rip your deck to shreds as well, check out today's pitch deck teardown in the show notes and follow the submit your deck link. Thank you again for listening and we'll talk again soon.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Equity is produced by Teresa Loconsolo with editing by Kel. Bryce Durbin is our illustrator and we'd like to give a big thanks to our audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch Audio Products. Thanks so much for listening and we'll talk to you next time.