Wrapper isn't a dirty word
Everyone is freaking out about DeepSeek. Ignore the noise and just keep building products.
“Wrapper” isn’t a dirty word. It means a product built on top of a technology. Almost every great product you’ve used it likely a wrapper of some other technology. Stripe, Robinhood, and Uber made existing technologies more accessible and valuable to everyday users. The same is true for Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Everything is a wrapper of a wrapper of a wrapper.
Yet somehow, in 2025, we’re obsessing over the underlying technology of AI. So much so, that today, January 27th, Wall Street is punishing the tech sector as a result of DeepSeek, the China-based research lab and model. The breakthrough of DeepSeek is driving down stocks like NVDA as much as -13% because it proved that state of the art AI models can be built and deployed for fractions of what it’s cost companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
Does this matter? In the short term, absolutely yes. It challenges the fundamentals of many of the most important technology companies over the past 24 months. But on the other hand — no, it doesn’t. If anything, this will only accelerate the race to AI and great technology getting into products and the hands of customers.
Startups that focus on technology over product may have advantages in the near term. The “wow” factor. On the other hand, they are far less durable over the long term. Over a long enough period of time, technology always commodifies — especially on the internet.
Products, on the other hand, can live forever. Apple, Disney, Coca Cola, Ford, Nike, and the list goes on. There’s nothing more durable and less commodified than great products which are beloved by actual paying customers. And so not only is “wrapper” not a dirty word — it’s a winning strategy.
I’m looking forward to seeding more simple wrappers that consumers love but overly intellectual VCs hate.
isn't it not 'wrappers are bad' and more, for investors, concern that
a) if something is 'just' a wrapper, you need to be especially thoughtful on how you're differentiated, what's your network effect/advantage, etc
b) make sure you're creating enough value for your customer/consumer that you're not forced to price at basically [compute + minimum viable margin]?