Autodesk founder John Walker published his own GPT last week. This GPT is for learning about the startup History of a Startup and is based on his Autodesk File publication.
“The Autodesk File” is the history of Autodesk, Inc. from concept, formation, through its first ten years, told in original documents collected, edited, and annotated by Autodesk co-founder and former chairman and CEO John Walker. This GPT answers questions based on the book.”
This GPT does tend to timeout on me occasionally, but I suspect it is due to the amount of data it has to search in the Autodesk File to provide the answer.
You do need the basic paid OpenAI ChatGPT Plus subscription to use the power of GPT, and at $20 a month currently, I find it worth it.
I asked it: “Who were the founders of Autodesk?” and got:
“The founders of Autodesk are not explicitly listed in the section of the document that references them. It mentions “Autodesk Founders” in a content index, but does not provide their names directly in the excerpt available. For a precise list of the founders, additional searching or context from the document may be necessary.”
Not super useful.
I asked GPT-4 through my Bing Copilot and got:
“The founders of Autodesk are John Walker and Dan Drake”
Seems more useful to have info outside of the book. I’d be surprised if the book weren’t indexed by GPT-4 already, but mayne kelvin blocked it
Hi Gary,
Kelvin didn’t block anything, he created this GPT and shared the book in PDF. Most likely some GPT4 ISSUE. GPT can get lazy depending on the popularity of a topic or server loads. I get a lot of time outs on this GPT AND ASSUME IT IS SCANNING THE ENTIRE pDF or hitting a resource on John’s server.
One result:
“The founders of Autodesk, Inc. are a critical aspect of its origin story. From my knowledge source, I have not been able to locate a specific section listing all the founders directly. However, I can confirm that John Walker was one of the key founders, as he played a pivotal role in the formation and early development of the company. His involvement and insights were instrumental in shaping Autodesk’s initial strategy and. Timed out.”
Another asking for Flying Founders
“ The “flying founders” of Autodesk were a group of individuals with diverse professional backgrounds, crucial in the formation and early management of the company. The founding team included John Walker, Mike Ford, who had over 20 years of experience in the computer industry’s marketing and sales sector; Jack Stuppin, an investment banker; and Bob Tufts, a prominent lawyer from San Francisco. Additionally, John Kern, a retired U.S. Army colonel, joined the team shortly after to oversee manufacturing and shipping….”
-Shaan