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The LAMP legacy from 1990s Silicon Valley: A primer for Film and TV professionals gazing into the next two decades.

Aug 11, 2023

In today’s The Brief, I turn our lens to a pivotal moment which started nearly three decades ago in Silicon Valley and I’ll juxtapose that time period with where we are today in the film and television industry.

From 1995 to 2005, the digital landscape of Silicon Valley was reshaped with the coming of age of the LAMP stack, a foundational pillar in web development. This transformative decade was then followed by another epoch from 2005 to 2015, which witnessed the maturation of the Y Combinator funding model and the groundbreaking introduction of the SAFE in 2013 (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) investment contracts. These three evolutions—LAMP, Y Combinator, and SAFE—left an indelible mark, steering the direction of startups and reshaping the Silicon Valley investment playbook.

In this post, I'll delve into the parallels and contrasts they draw with today's Film and Television Industry, offering insights into the ongoing evolution of content creation and its financing.

A THEME TO REMEMBER: In tracing the evolution of technological epochs, three distinct stages consistently emerge:
Proprietary technologies dominate the initial phase, offering robust capabilities but at the expense of high costs and complex learning curves.
The momentum then shifts towards open-source alternatives, freely available tools that simplify usage and democratize access.
The final stage sees the adoption of universal standards, streamlining collaboration and enhancing interoperability among these tools. Throughout this journey, the balance continuously shifts from proprietary constraints to open-source freedom, culminating in standardized frameworks that catalyze innovation.

Let’s go back to 1993 in the Silicon Valley.

In 1993, Silicon Valley's fundraising scene was drastically different from the world we know today. During this era, e-commerce startups needed to raise $5 million in initial funding and took as much as a year or more to get their product market. Expert teams familiar with proprietary systems were essential, and each financial arrangement, from investors to vendors, was a bespoke contract needing expensive legal insight. For new founders, this terrain was treacherous, filled with savvy financial players. This era was a gauntlet, challenging entrepreneurs well before today's more accessible funding paths.

1995 and the rise of the LAMP stack.

The LAMP stack, an acronym derived from Linux (operating system), Apache (web server), MySQL (database), and PHP (programming language), emerged as a cornerstone for web development in the late 1990’s and 2000’s. This open-source quartet offered a cost-free alternative to expensive and hard to learn proprietary software, allowing startups to bypass significant capital barriers. Beyond its fiscal advantages, the LAMP stack's accessibility made it a favorite among developers: easy to learn, yet robust enough to facilitate a fully functional e-commerce platform. This democratization of technology not only paved the way for a new generation of online businesses but also redefined the calculus for venture funding. Investors could now bet on innovative ideas without the looming overhead of software costs, catalyzing a more dynamic startup ecosystem.

2005 and the advent of Y Combinator.

In 2005, Silicon Valley saw the genesis of a revolutionary entity: Y Combinator. Founded by Paul Graham, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, and Trevor Blackwell, it harnessed the capabilities of the LAMP stack, democratizing startup founding. Instead of seeking out individual investments, Y Combinator innovated with its cohort-based model. Startups would be given around $50,000, joining cohorts typically comprising several entrepreneurial teams. Over a span of 15 weeks, these startups would intensively work on their projects utilize the LAMP stack, culminating in a Demo Day presentation. This streamlined approach altered the landscape: from needing $5 million and years to reach the market, to just $50,000 and a few months. The efficacy of Y Combinator's model is underscored by its roster of successes, including Dropbox, Airbnb, and Stripe, to name a few.

A THEME TO REMEMBER: In the chronicles of technological progress, three pivotal phases emerge. From the confines of high-cost proprietary systems, we transition to accessible open-source alternatives, culminating in universal standards. This transformative journey not only slashes creation costs but also redefines funding, hastens time to market, and democratizes expertise, allowing a wider array of innovators to thrive.

How SAFE agreements changed the efficacy of fundraising.

Introduced by Y Combinator in 2013, the SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity) radically transformed the startup financing landscape. Prior to its introduction, fundraising was a maze of intricate, bespoke contracts, wherein inexperienced founders often found themselves outmaneuvered, losing out in byzantine negotiations. The SAFE, make possible by Y Combinator’s market power, changed that, forcing investors, lawyers, and agents into a common pattern, offering a standardized, easy-to-understand agreement that significantly leveled the playing field for entrepreneurs. No longer did first-time founders have to grapple with the fear of clandestine clauses or worry about navigating the intricacies of traditional financing agreements. The dependence on "agents" or brokers, who once held the power in negotiating each unique deal, diminished. The advent of the SAFE not only democratized the fundraising process but also drastically reduced associated legal costs and complexities, granting many startups a more confident start.

A THEME TO REMEMBER: In our exploration of Y Combinator's influence on startup funding, the introduction of standardized agreements in late 2013 is notable:
Prior to these agreements, financing was a tangled and often cloudy affair, characterized by unique contracts that could be disadvantageous to greenhorn entrepreneurs.
Standardized agreements introduced a uniform contract model, avoiding the intricacies of traditional valuations, rendering early-stage investments more in favor of founders.
This shift essentially nullified the necessity for middlemen or negotiators, streamlining legal intricacies and trimming down associated expenditures.
As a result, this novelty redefined the terrain of early-stage startup financing, ensuring clearer and fairer terms for emerging pioneers.

By 2015 SAFE agreement became the standard way of financing seed rounds.

Today, striking parallels can be observed in the Film and Television industry, reminiscent of the Silicon Valley atmosphere of 1993. Just as web innovators then grappled with high entry costs and a steep learning curve, modern filmmakers face towering expenses to bring their visions to life. A mastery of intricate, proprietary tools is a must, demanding a unique blend of expertise that is both rare and challenging to cultivate. To produce a single film, a staggering assembly of hundreds is often required, laboring diligently over periods that can stretch to a disheartening seven years. And if the production complexities weren't daunting enough, the financial side presents its own labyrinth. Securing funding and drafting contracts for a galaxy of talent, from writers and directors to actors and crew, has become a convoluted dance. This ritual, controlled by a legion of agents and lawyers, is often shrouded in mystery, leaving many creatives feeling like outsiders in their own industry.

But we are now seeing the beginning of our own technological epoch.

Starting around 2020, the film and television industry began a transformative journey, echoing the shifts once seen with the LAMP stack in the digital realm. Here are some key shifts emblematic of this transformation:

Blender has emerged as a dynamic competitor to traditionally dominant, pricey 3D modeling tools like Autodesk's Maya. Its robust feature set, combined with the power of open source, provides filmmakers with a cost-effective yet powerful solution for visual effects, animation, and more.
Unreal Engine, though initially crafted for game development, has ventured beyond its original domain, offering film and TV creators a real-time rendering environment. It stands as an alternative to more cumbersome, expensive visualization and pre-visualization platforms, revolutionizing set designs, character simulations, and even real-time cinematography.
DaVinci Resolve has made waves by offering a comprehensive suite for video editing, color correction, and audio post-production, challenging the dominance of tools like Adobe's Premiere Pro and Avid's Media Composer.

As these tools gain traction, the industry's barrier to entry lowers, enabling a more diverse range of creators to craft visually compelling stories without being tethered to exorbitant costs or insurmountable learning curves. Just as LAMP democratized web development, this new wave of software is poised to redefine the cinematic creation landscape.

2019 and the advent of AI.

Debuting in 2019, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, an offshoot of their groundbreaking language models, while Midjourney, founded by a visionary team in the same timeframe, emerged on the scene to leverage the transformative power of AI in filmmaking. The collaboration of these tools and their contemporaries is revolutionizing the cinema space. ChatGPT has the promise to adeptly streamline scriptwriting, condensing weeks of work into mere hours, providing tools for dialogue generation and narrative development. Midjourney, in its brilliance, has automated intricate tasks such as video editing, sound design, and special effects rendering. This swift evolution, led by such innovations, is ensuring that filmmakers, whether budding enthusiasts or industry veterans, are armed with state-of-the-art tools that are democratizing film and television production, dramatically reducing costs, and cutting down production timelines.

The next 10 years in the film and television industry.

As we cast our gaze upon the horizon of the film and television industry, the coming decade portends a metamorphosis reminiscent of the seismic shifts heralded by LAMP, Y Combinator, and SAFE agreements in the tech world. Central to this cinematic revolution is a new stack, one that call SMURF:

Screenplays, Storyboards and Shot Lists: AI-assisted writing tools will generate intricate narratives, drawing on vast databases of film history, tropes, and viewer preferences. Tools like ChatGPT might usher in a new era of scriptwriting. For shot lists, advanced AI algorithms will intuitively create comprehensive shot lists, ensuring that every frame aligns with the director's vision, streamlining the production process.
Modeling and Environment Building: Gone will be the days of physical sets for most movies and television series (but more on that later) Open-source platforms, such as Blender (free) and free, or nearly free 3D asset libraries like Quixel and Kitbash3D, will democratize the creation of lifelike models and immersive environments, making the boundary between reality and CGI almost indistinguishable.
Unreal Engine: Spearheading the domain of virtual production, Unreal Engine (which is free for filmmakers) is set to make real-time, on-set visual effects the industry standard, blurring the lines between pre and post-production.
Rendering: With AI-enhanced tools, the time-consuming process of rendering, once the bane of filmmakers, will be exponentially accelerated, bringing scenes to life with unprecedented fidelity all on a single PC in a creators home office.
Final Cut: Free editing suites like DaVinci Resolve will leverage AI to automate many tasks within the editing process, fine-tuning the narrative flow and ensuring cinematic perfection.

But these are just a few. As I’m tracking the advent of the SMURF stack, I’m seeing as many as 10 new open source projects and 10 new free or nearly free software products launch or version-up per day! In 10 years the SMURF stack may well be comprised of 1,000s of interconnected free to use open source projects. This SMURF framework, powered by the dual engines of AI and open-source, could herald the promise to democratize and revolutionize filmmaking, lowering barriers and unlocking unparalleled creative potential.

A THEME TO REVISIT: In tracing the evolution of technological epochs, three distinct stages consistently emerge:
Houdini, Cinema 4D, Maya, and Avid: Proprietary technologies dominate the initial phase, offering robust capabilities but at the expense of high costs and complex learning curves.
Blender, Unreal Engine, Omniverse, and DaVinci Code. The momentum then shifts towards open-source alternatives, freely available tools that simplify usage and democratize access.
FBX and USD. The final stage sees the adoption of universal standards, streamlining collaboration and enhancing interoperability among these tools. Throughout this journey, the balance continuously shifts from proprietary constraints to open-source freedom, culminating in standardized frameworks that catalyze innovation.

What technologies need maturing before SMURF can do what LAMP did?

As we stand today, several technological challenges prevent us from creating films that are entirely CGI and AI-driven while retaining a genuinely authentic feel. Firstly, there's the nuance of human emotion and interaction. While CGI can craft stunning visuals, replicating the intricate subtleties of human expression and body language in high fidelity remains a challenge. AI, for its part, struggles with genuine storytelling; though it can emulate narrative structures, capturing the depth, unpredictability, and emotional arcs that resonate with audiences is still out of reach. Additionally, the organic spontaneity, improvisation, and unique actor perspectives that often shape memorable cinematic moments are yet to be authentically mimicked by any machine. The art of cinematography, with its intuitive sense of light, shadow, and composition, still leans heavily on the human touch. Finally, the sheer computational power required to generate full-length films in impeccable detail is enormous. While we've made significant advancements, marrying CGI and AI in cinema to feel wholly natural remains an aspirational frontier and likely will take the full 10 years to evolve.

Could there be a Y Combinator for Films?

Within the kaleidoscope of the film and media landscape, the dawn of the SMURF stack holds the potential to catalyze the inception of a Y Combinator analogue. Such a vanguard institution would fundamentally alter the mechanics of film and media funding. Imagine a world where bloated production budgets and prolonged timelines are eschewed in favor of lean, agile approaches. Harnessing the power of the SMURF stack, this entity could establish a brisk 15-week accelerator program. Within this compressed timeframe, budding filmmakers would be tasked with producing a captivating trailer and a pair of debut episodes. Much like the electrifying atmosphere of Y Combinator's demo days, these film cohorts would pitch their creations to an eager audience of streaming platforms and networks, all vying to discover the next cinematic sensation.

Could we have SAFE agreements in Hollywood?

Further, as the SMURF-infused paradigm takes hold and our Y Combinator counterpart gains traction and clout, the film industry could witness the advent of its own iteration of SAFE agreements. Building on the playbook of the tech world, this new paradigm could leverage its formidable market influence to champion standardized contracts, free from the convoluted legalese that has for long clouded the industry. From investors to VFX maestros, every stakeholder in the cinematic symphony would have clear, comprehensible, and standardized terms. This would not only democratize participation but also lay the groundwork for an era where collaboration and creativity reign supreme, unshackled by bureaucratic red tape.

As the Film and Television industry embarks on a decade of transformation, we're poised to witness an evolution and a revolution. While innovations like the SMURF stack promise democratization and swift progression, there will invariably be winners and losers in this reshuffled landscape. Alongside the myriad positive impacts, inevitable challenges and unanticipated consequences will emerge. Ultimately, this tumultuous journey may redefine what it means to entertain and craft art through film, with the industry’s final visage possibly unlike anything we've previously known.

Lighting ROUND Q & A

Do you genuinely believe that the Hollywood industry, along with agents and lawyers, would embrace SAFE-esque contracts?

Unless circumstances compel them, I'm skeptical. Remember, there was significant resistance to Y Combinator's SAFE contracts from numerous investors. It was the combination of Y Combinator's impressive track record, its undeniable market influence, and the support from pivotal investment partners that solidified SAFE's standing. Absent such influential market sway, the initiative wouldn't have seen the light of day.

In the foreseeable NEAR TERM future, do you envision a platform akin to Y Combinator tailored for the film sector?

It seems improbable. Until the SMURF stack catalyzes a drastic reduction in production expenditures—by at least a factor of ten—it's hard to see the feasibility of a film-centric Y Combinator emerging.

Considering it took two decades for concepts like LAMP, Y Combinator, and SAFE to flourish in Silicon Valley, do you foresee AI and SMURF making headway at a quicker pace?

I remain doubtful. No sector, Hollywood included, jumps on the bandwagon of revolutionary tech in a heartbeat. There's invariably a protracted phase of negotiation and adaptation before a novel technology carves out its niche.

Do you think SMURF is a good thing? What will it do to the art of filmmaking?

It is not really for me to say. I approach my post more as a researcher and reporter than I do a participant. Drawing from the annals of history, a surge in content accessibility tends to skyrocket content volume but often compromises quality.

What will happen to content once SMURF and AI mature?

Historically, technological advancement moves through two distinct stages of evolution. The first stage, which I've termed the "apparent stage," focuses on harnessing technology to refine, economize, and hasten the delivery of pre-existing products. Taking LAMP as an illustration, its primary role was to make e-commerce website development more cost-effective. The second stage, dubbed the "unexpected stage," leverages technology in innovative ways that weren't previously anticipated. For instance, LAMP or technologies resembling it paved the way for Social Media platforms, a concept virtually unimaginable in 1993.

Translating this to the realm of film and television, the initial stage will be centered on slashing production costs and expedited pre-visualization or launch of shows and movies - the predictable aspect. However, the second stage remains an enigma. It's plausible that AI combined with SMURF will give rise to novel entertainment genres and content beyond our current foresight.

What is The Brief?

I release a weekly digest every Friday, tailored for professionals ranging from executives to writers, directors, cinematographers, editors, and anyone actively involved in the film and television domain. This briefing offers a comprehensive yet accessible perspective on the convergence of technology and its implications for the movie and TV industry. It serves as an efficient gateway to understanding the nexus between Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

What’s the format of The Brief?

In the evolving landscape of Film and Television, concerns about the repercussions of rapid technological advancements are growing. Many in the industry fear that innovations, like AI, could threaten job security, while there's an unease that corporations might put profit margins ahead of fair compensation. But history, particularly from past technological waves in Silicon Valley, offers us valuable lessons. In this daily analysis, I'll juxtapose historical context with present-day developments, aiming to provide clear and informed insights into how the industry is being reshaped — acknowledging the challenges but also spotlighting the new horizons.

Who am I?

I'm Steve Newcomb, perhaps most recognized for founding Powerset, which was later acquired by Microsoft and transformed into Microsoft Bing. I had the privilege of being on the pioneering team that witnessed the inaugural email sent via a mobile device. My journey also led me to SRI (Stanford Research Institute), where we laid the groundwork for contemporary speech recognition technology. Additionally, I was a co-founder of the debut company to introduce a 3D physics engine in Javascript. I've held positions on the board of directors and contributed funding to massive open source initiatives like NodeJS and even the largest such project, jQuery. My experience extends to academia, having been a senior fellow at the University of California, Berkeley's engineering and business faculties. Recently, I ventured into Layer 2 internet protocols and assisted a company named Matter Labs in securing $440 million in funding to bolster their endeavors.

What am I doing besides writing these posts?

Typically, I allocate a year between groundbreaking ventures. My exploration for the upcoming project commenced in May 2023, and the sole certainty is its nexus with the film, television, SMURF, and AI domains. Sharing insights on my research endeavors helps me discern between feasible prospects and mere illusions.

If you are interested in contacting me, my email is steve.e.newcomb@gmail.com.

Got SMURF?

The LAMP legacy from 1990s Silicon Valley: A primer for Film and TV professionals gazing into the next two decades.

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