Building Surge AI to $1 Billion with Edwin Chen

Edwin Chen, Founder & CEO of Surge AI, joins SPC Partner Evan Tana to discuss building a bootstrapped AI unicorn. Surge AI provides the high-quality human feedback (RLHF) that powers the world's most advanced Large Language Models. In this interview, Edwin breaks down why data quality is the biggest bottleneck for AGI, why he chose to bootstrap instead of raising VC funding, and the difference between "textbook smart" and "street smart" AI models. Edwin Chen:   / edwinzchen   Evan Tana:   / evantana   South Park Commons:   / southparkcommons   Apply to SPC: https://www.southparkcommons.com/apply Chapters: 00:00:00 Intro & The Surge Story 00:04:15 Defining AGI & The "Laziness" Trap 00:11:28 Why Surge AI Bootstrapped (The Anti-VC Approach) 00:22:50 Why AI Benchmarks Are Broken 00:36:09 Smart vs. Useful AI 00:44:00 The Future of Data & Internationalization