Open Scout - 10

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Brought to you by Masterworks

Unicorn Fintech Platform Goes 9 for 9 with Profitable Exits in 2022

Last year was a bloodbath for the average investor. But despite this dismal backdrop, one investment platform saw its best year ever.

It's called Masterworks. This unicorn fintech platform is unlocking the blue-chip art market for everyday investors. And Masterworks is realizing some impressive results. All 11 of their exits have been profitable – 9 of those in 2022 – with the last 3 realizing +13.9%, +35.0%, and +10.4% net returns each.

By qualifying every offering with the SEC, Masterworks makes it incredibly simple for investors with no experience in fine art to benefit from this $1.7 trillion asset class. Open Scout readers can skip the waitlist to join here.

See important Regulation A disclosures.

Our top picks for the week:

Startup Name: Component

Geography: US

Description: Component is a no-code solution that simplifies business workflows. It streamlines complex tasks such as collecting information from forms, filling out PDFs, collecting digital signatures, uploading to SharePoint, scheduling calendar appointments, and collecting payments. With Component, businesses can easily create customized workflows that integrate all these steps, making it simple for clients to complete tasks with just one link.

Founder(s) background: Founder @ Waitlist

Backed by (public source): Ludlow Ventures

Startup Name: fabra

Geography: US

Description: fabra offers a better way to do product analytics by allowing users to build funnels and measure trends directly on their data warehouse without the need for costly ETL and duplicate storage in outdated analytics tools.

Founder(s) background: Software Engineer @ AWS, Product Manager @ Bolt, Operations @ Faire, Yoshi

Backed by (public source): N/A

Insights:

The day for the release of GPT-4 is getting closer. The anticipation for GPT-4 is palpable, as the previous versions of GPT have revolutionized the world of natural language processing. GPT-3, in particular, has been a game-changer, with its ability to generate human-like text, perform complex tasks, and even create art.

However, GPT-4 is not just an increase in size, it is an improvement on existing parameters. With GPT-4, existing models will be streamlined and performance will be improved, resulting in reduced computing costs. Using Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), OpenAI trains its models to give plausible-sounding but incorrect answers, which can lead to issues with prejudice and misinformation. However, OpenAI hopes that GPT-4's enhanced and streamlined data sets will reduce these instances.

The possibilities with GPT-4 are endless and many experts in the field are eagerly waiting to see what this new version can do.

Will you pay for ChatGPT? OpenAI is exploring monetization options for ChatGPT. The paid plan (join waitlist) will offer "higher limits and faster performance." Additionally, a new version of the model has been released on January 9, 2023 that is more factually accurate, but some users are complaining that it is now too restrictive.

On another note, layoffs continue! layoffs.fyi, a website that keeps tabs on layoffs, reports that 25,436 people were laid off by tech companies around the world between January 1, 2023 and January 17, 2023.

That’s all for this week.

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Kenneth