[HN Gopher] Golden raises $14.5M Series A led by a16z and Marc A...
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Golden raises $14.5M Series A led by a16z and Marc Andreessen joins
board
Author : gaborcselle
Score : 84 points
Date : 2020-09-30 19:17 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (golden.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (golden.com)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| hadn't heard of it. Sounds like the semantic web or Wolfram
| Alpha. It's very ambitious and I think almost like an AGI type
| problem, because parsing human queries to the point where the
| system can actually reason about semantics, and on its own create
| ontologies and relationships of everything you find on the web
| that are actually useful and accurate is difficult.
| prepend wrote:
| Is the name a reference to Dune's "Golden Path?"
| narrationbox wrote:
| This particular field is difficult. Other than Google (through
| Search and also its acquisition of Metaweb), no other company has
| managed to achieve tremendous revenue with a knowledge base
| product alone. Cyc, Wolfram Alpha, the original IBM Watson (the
| expert system, not the ML APIs borrowing the brand) are all
| surviving but not thriving.
| tagami wrote:
| Congrats Jude & Team!
| pbronez wrote:
| I wish the pricing/business model supported niche wiki creation.
| I want to put together a broad public knowledge base about a
| niche product segment, that connects common data elements for
| companies and products with deep technical models of the products
| themselves. Golden's tooling looks super useful, but too
| expensive for this use case.
| fab1an wrote:
| Really great to see some actual non incremental innovation
| happening in the search space.
|
| When looking at Golden's value prop, it becomes clear that Google
| has actually been somewhat, ehm, lazy when it comes to making
| search better, relying almost 100% on UGC to provide answers
| instead of trying to structure them in a concise way.
|
| Very curious to see where this leads!
| treelovinhippie wrote:
| > Very curious to see where this leads!
|
| Well they took VC. So it won't lead anywhere interesting other
| than value enclosure and exit to surveillance capitalism.
| xoxoy wrote:
| it's more like a proprietary wikipedia than a google. at least
| that's my impression playing around with it.
| troymc wrote:
| I gather that the knowledge in Golden is more structured,
| making it more like a database than a wiki, i.e. more like
| Wikidata or Semantic MediaWiki than Wikipedia.
| fab1an wrote:
| it looks like a mix of Wikipedia, Google and a Bloomberg
| terminal
| newguy1234 wrote:
| I could see this being used more for research type of work.
| Wikipedia is good for the high-level/popular topics but for
| very specific fields, there won't be anything significant.
| Think of areas like drug research.
| newguy1234 wrote:
| I agree as well with google. When google first showed up, it
| was a breakthrough since the quality of the results were so
| good compared to what we are used to. Fast forward to today -
| more data, more websites and so on has resulted in new problems
| and I think Google has not kept up. Just because a website has
| been around for a decade or has 50,000 backlinks doesn't mean
| it is still good today. Information might be obsolete. Websites
| like this usually rank high in the search results page while
| being low-value. Meanwhile, higher-value websites that are more
| recent get lower rankings even though the quality is superior.
| Google is not able to make these connections. It seems like AI
| might be able to improve the quality of search results if
| applied correctly.
| paxys wrote:
| Google has had various products and efforts over the years to
| do exactly that, so I'm not sure if "lazy" is the right word.
| Knol was doomed from the start because it foolishly went head-
| to-head with Wikipedia. Other efforts, like Freebase, were
| fairly successful, and knowledge graph today is pretty great
| for what it does, both as part of search results but even more
| so when powering their ML/vision/NLP APIs.
|
| Looking through Golden's website they seem to want to do all of
| the same, but using their own (also user-contributed) content,
| aiming to make it accessible and valuable enough that companies
| will pay $1000 per month per employee (!) for it. I know almost
| nothing about the product so will hold off too much judgement,
| but that sounds like a pipe dream.
| Liron wrote:
| I didn't understand Golden's value prop when they raised last
| year, and wrote a post explaining why [1]. I don't understand it
| now either.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/bloated-mvp/golden-is-a-bloated-
| mvp-27971...
| gerbler wrote:
| Pretty slick but I think calling it "The most comprehensive
| knowledge platform" is a slight exaggeration. I searched for a
| few random topics ("urban planning", "pianos" and "bitcoin") and
| bitcoin was the only one to have a (lengthy) article.
|
| I also don't understand the incentive for users to contribute to
| a knowledge base that is then being sold:
| https://golden.com/pricing
| ordinaryradical wrote:
| Unfortunately this was created because Wikipedia refused to
| keep articles on obscure altcoins so it's very crypto heavy.
| That's why a16z has jumped in I'd imagine--they very much drank
| the crypto koolaid and like the synergy.
|
| This was also why I could never really see this becoming a
| serious product. It's an SEO trick for ICOs looking to hype
| themselves, a far cry from a knowledge base. Mismatched
| incentives will screw up the value prop.
| gerbler wrote:
| Interesting - didn't realize Wikipedia didn't allow such
| articles.
|
| But in general, Golden seems to have a very strong tech bias
| - which is fine, but limits what it can be used for.
| troymc wrote:
| "On Wikipedia, __notability __is a test used by editors to
| decide whether a given topic warrants its own article. "
|
| From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
|
| Most altcoins are not notable by the Wikipedia standard of
| notability.
| huac wrote:
| > But in general, Golden seems to have a very strong tech
| bias - which is fine, but limits what it can be used for.
|
| Today, yes, but not necessarily in the future. Facebook
| started on elite college campuses, built its network, and
| expanded.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Tried searching for Bach, first result besides a bunch of
| companies (?) is a Canadian product designer. Johann Sebastian
| Bach isn't even in the first page of search results somehow.
| thesimon wrote:
| Mozart not much better, but more recent artist seem to score
| better, though the pages don't contain any content and the
| meta-information is also not great.
|
| A search for Merkel delivers an arms company before Angela
| Merkel, GDP delivers some companies.
|
| Relationships between persons don't seem to be present.
|
| A search for Mercedes Benz doesnt deliver anything too great.
| Snowden requires an Edward to find him, NSA is a company,
| Chrome has no info.
|
| Maybe I'm looking for the wrong terms, but it seems like they
| basically just imported companies from public domain and some
| random stuff on the side, which mostly is just the title of
| something.
| Glamdring137 wrote:
| Very cool!
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| Reminds me of metaweb.
| adventured wrote:
| An attempt at an AI enhanced, suped up Wikipedia. Definitely in
| the model of Freebase.
|
| It'll end in a sell-and-bury exactly as Freebase did, for
| exactly the same reason: venture capital + knowledge service =
| only one possible eventual outcome. It's always just a matter
| of time before the money corrupts the service. The demand for
| an exit / return (outsized at that, typically) by the owners
| who have put up a large amount of money forces the matter. Now
| that big venture capital controls them, they have to pursue
| revenue and profit as their long-term primary goal for
| existing, rather than knowledge being at the center of the
| mission (initially they'll pretend knowledge is at the center
| of their mission, that will pivot as the return pressure builds
| on them over time).
|
| When's the IPO? But but but we're a knowledge service, we're
| here to help humanity. Where's my return? When do I get a
| 1,000% return on my $10m? But but but we're a knowledge
| service, we just want to spread knowledge for the betterment of
| all. Breaking news, July 2024: Golden purchased by Verizon
| Media [insert big corporate swamp monster here] for $586
| million in a fire sale. July 2026, Verizon Media quietly buries
| Golden.
|
| Andreessen in particular seems bent on driving as many
| interesting knowledge concepts into the ground as he can. His
| magic knowledge service touch was all over Rap Genius as well
| (with dreams of annotate-everything going back to the Netscape
| days [1]).
|
| There hasn't been a single prominent knowledge service in the
| history of the Web that has escaped destruction once they've
| taken big venture capital, except for Stack Exchange and
| they're starting to teeter on the edge where the owners start
| to push it in a way that begins the rolling corruption phase
| (with Stack that inevitable process was delayed for a long time
| by the influence of its founders and the decisions they made,
| but eventually papa VC wants his fat return).
|
| The only for-profit knowledge services that survive with their
| soul intact, are slim independent operations like wikiHow that
| are not commanded by venture capital and the never-ending need
| to force an exit.
|
| [1] https://genius.com/Marc-andreessen-why-andreessen-
| horowitz-i...
|
| "But that's just the start. It turns out that Rap Genius has a
| much bigger idea and a much broader mission than that. Which
| is: Generalize out to many other categories of text... annotate
| the world... be the knowledge about the knowledge... create the
| Internet Talmud."
|
| "Back in 1993, when Eric Bina and I were first building Mosaic,
| it seemed obvious to us that users would want to annotate all
| text on the web"
|
| Bullshit.
| breck wrote:
| I think this is a reasonable prediction. To paraphrase
| something I saw on here recently: "in the long run, business
| model trumps culture". I think there are hundreds of
| directions the business could go (Freebase being one, the
| next Bloomberg another, a simple shutdown being the most
| likely route in VC startups). But I agree with your
| skepticism that in the long-run the "we're here to help
| humanity" ethos will take a back seat to the profit motive.
|
| But all that being said, there's always at least a chance
| that the organization somehow bucks the trend. Or, even if
| the organization eventually becomes dominated by the profit
| motive in the long run, that's not to say that it won't build
| really beneficial things before that happens. Freebase
| eventually sold and stopped maintaining it, but it built a
| free database that anyone in the world could use (and still
| could use). It pioneered a concept. I don't know what Rap
| Genius is up to these days, but I thought their annotations
| ux was really innovative and I'm sure pioneered a whole lot
| of other sites. So even if an organization's mission
| eventually takes a back seat to profit, it can create ton of
| value along the way.
|
| Personally I find this startup very interesting and am
| excited to see where they go.
| tonystubblebine wrote:
| > The only for-profit knowledge services that survive with
| their soul intact
|
| I agree about the corrupting influence of VC. The following
| isn't a super popular opinion on HN lately, but this is
| exactly why I've been a believer in Medium since they
| launched their subscription service. It's the rare startup
| where I could see their financial incentives and also think
| those incentives would be good for me as a reader. They made
| the knowledge the product and removed the incentive to use
| the knowledge as a sales pitch for some other product, i.e.
| content marketing. And they have to constantly push for
| articles that qualify as subscription worthy. That means
| focus on quality. I don't think they've tipped over yet, but
| what I've seen so far is that the more subscribers Medium
| gets the more they spend to get better and better articles.
| And as the payouts to authors get better, better authors come
| on board.
| llarsson wrote:
| Congrats!
|
| Now what, without marketing speak, does it do?
| texasbigdata wrote:
| Consume investor money? :)
| xoxoy wrote:
| Isn't this just a proprietary wikipedia?
| brokensegue wrote:
| yeah.
| Traster wrote:
| I feel I might be too jaded to comment on this, so let me just
| preface this as the view from outside silicon valley
|
| > our vision to build an extensive database and graph of
| knowledge for humanity, including practical commercial tools and
| community features to aid discovery and decisions.
|
| So you, and your, what? half dozen phds? want to produce a graph
| of human knowledge. Okay fine. That's a lofty goal, let's set you
| up like Harry Seldon and check in on you in a thousand years. Oh!
| You're going to do the almost impossible _and_ have practical
| commercial tools in our life time. Ok.
|
| Look, I'm not saying that Golden is going to be unsuccessful,
| it's probably going to be very succesful, they've got those guys
| that backed that misogynistic online frat house behind them, so
| there's a certain level of assured successs. I just question why
| blatantly lying about your goals is a pre-requisit for funding in
| silicon valley.
| bfieidhbrjr wrote:
| Serious question, are they building another FreeBase?
| electriclove wrote:
| But monetized ala Bloomberg
| ffggvv wrote:
| tried searching "election" and didn't really get any useful
| information
| theYipster wrote:
| Having worked with the "original" Watson, I saw first hand how
| the system stumbled upon a particularly stupid but hard problem
| as it tried to scale.
|
| In 2014, I saw a demo of the original Discovery Advisor, which
| was at the time the closest commercial equivalent to the
| "Jeopardy system." This demo took in Wikipedia as a corpus, and a
| question was asked: "what country produced the greatest amount of
| wheat in 2012?" The system returned a list of countries as
| answers, so it wasn't quite nonsensical, but it was clear the
| answers were incorrect. The answers were countries like
| "England," "Norway," or "Zimbabwe." This system also returned
| passages from Wikipedia as supporting evidence, but the passages
| weren't about wheat production. Instead, they were about quotes
| that contained the word wheat... such as "let's cut the wheat
| from the chaff."
|
| So of course, some smart-alec in the room Googles the same
| question, and this was before Google had the ability to return
| factual answers to factual questions, so instead we got a list of
| web results. The top result, interestingly, was a Wikipedia
| article titled "Wheat Production by Country." Opening that
| article presented a table that clearly showed that China produced
| the greatest amount of wheat in 2012.
|
| Unfortunately, that Watson system at the time didn't read
| information from tables. I'm not sure if it does now, but I do
| know that reading data from tables in a manner that can be easily
| integrated and scaled within a broader semantic processing system
| is quite difficult. I'm not as focused on the space as I once
| was, so I'm not sure if the problem has been well solved yet. If
| not, I'd say it's a worthy area to invest in a solution.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| > I do know that reading data from tables in a manner that can
| be easily integrated and scaled within a broader semantic
| processing system is quite difficult. I'm not as focused on the
| space as I once was, so I'm not sure if the problem has been
| well solved yet.
|
| I saw a presentation on this paper at SIGKDD this year.
| https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3394486.3406468 "Multi-modal
| Information Extraction from Text, Semi-structured, and Tabular
| Data on the Web"
| Cactus2018 wrote:
| > I'm not sure if it does now, but I do know that reading data
| from tables in a manner that can be easily integrated and
| scaled within a broader semantic processing system is quite
| difficult. I'm not as focused on the space as I once was, so
| I'm not sure if the problem has been well solved yet. If not,
| I'd say it's a worthy area to invest in a solution.
|
| In R you can read data from tables like this:
| df<-htmltab::htmltab("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Penins
| ula_of_Michigan",3)
|
| In google sheets =ImportHtml("http://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Upper_Peninsula_of_Michigan","table",3)
|
| In Python+Pandas df=pandas.read_html('https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_postal_codes_of_Canada:_M',
| header=0)[0]
| anxman wrote:
| Congrats Jude! Super star CEO.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| Good for Jude, he's one of the few people that is always about
| knowledge and not the flavor of day discussion.
| chx wrote:
| Is this another Cyc? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
| freediver wrote:
| The lack of clear use case reminds me of Qwiki 10 years ago.
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