Podbit · The a16z Show
Round-tripping — where a chip company invests in a customer who then buys chips — is objectively happening but at a small scale. Baker argues it's driven by competitive dynamics: NVIDIA's existential rival is Google's TPU, and investing in OpenAI or xAI is a rational strategic response, not a sign of bubble financing.
Where this was said
At 7:47 · chapter starts 7:30
The conversation turns to round-tripping — the practice, echoing internet-era accounting games, where NVIDIA invests in companies like OpenAI that then use those funds to buy NVIDIA chips. Baker is blunt: it's objectively happening, but at a very small scale and for rational strategic reasons [1] — Gavin Baker "Round-tripping — where a chip company invests in a customer who then buys chips — is objectively happening but at a small scale. Baker argu…" 07:47 . The real driver isn't financing need — it's competitive dynamics. NVIDIA's most dangerous rival isn't AMD, Broadcom, or Intel; it's Google, which owns both the TPU chip and the DeepMind research lab and is arguably the leading AI company today, having taken 15–20 points of traffic share in just 2–3 months through Gemini. Anthropic, meanwhile, is effectively captive to Google TPUs and Amazon Trainium. That leaves OpenAI and xAI as the independent labs, and if Google is subsidizing its AI ecosystem, NVIDIA must respond in kind. Baker relays Jensen Huang's view that these investments are expected to be good investments — a rational strategic bet, not bubble-era excess.
Google's Gemini has taken 15–20 points of web traffic share in just 2–3 months, suggesting Google may already be the largest AI product by traffic.
SiteGPT attracted over 1 million visitors and $500K in total revenue without spending a cent on paid marketing. The secret: engineering as marketing — building free tools that rank on Google.
Bhanu quit his first job after just 8 months, moved back to his parents' house to cut costs, and started building. One product sold for $250K; the next hit $10K MRR in its first month.
90% of SiteGPT's Google search traffic comes not from the main product but from ~50 free tools Bhanu built. Each tool targets a low-competition keyword and funnels users back to the paid product.
50,000 monthly visitors become 200 leads, 60 trials, and roughly 15–24 new customers per month at ~$100 average revenue each. Add a $1,700–$1,800 LTV and you have a very healthy SaaS.
Start with a blank Ahrefs search, layer in keyword filters (include term, KD < 10, volume > 1,000), list candidates in Notion, design a CTA linking to your main product, then score by volume, difficulty, build effort, and product relevance. That's the whole playbook.
Marketing feels painful for most builders. Engineering as marketing flips the script: instead of writing cold emails or blog posts, you build things — and those things rank on Google forever.
Don't spend months perfecting before launch. Ship the core feature, get real users, and let their feedback dictate the product roadmap. Premature polish is a trap.
SiteGPT launched and hit $10,000 MRR within its first month. That momentum was so overwhelming that Bhanu sold his existing SaaS, Feather, for $250,000 to free up all his time.
PropGPT launched with 20 downloads a day and strong influencer marketing but hit a ceiling at $1,000–$2,000 MRR. High download numbers masked a critical flaw: almost nobody stuck around after the free trial ended.
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