Happy Monday!!
I started watching the “Abstract“ Documentary series on Netflix this weekend. So far, pretty cool. Such a soothing experience to watch.
Also went to Printworks for the first time on Saturday. Have to say, I’m not a huge fan of standing and bobbing my head up and down for hours on end; but hey, gotta spice it up once in a while I guess.
A little inspiration:
“To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.“
—John Henry Newman
A few thoughts:
Here’s Morgan Stanley on US equities:
“While the recent move higher in front-end rates is supportive of the notion that the Fed may remain restrictive for longer than appreciated, the equity market is refusing to accept this reality,” a team led by Michael Wilson wrote in a note.
“Refusing to accept reality“ is probably the most fun phrase to hear ever ahah I guess you create your own reality… And the stock market has been so good at doing it, I’m not sure if it even matters what reality is any more.
Sounds like reality cannot be reality if it is not accepted as so.
Also, I think there’s only so much reality the stock market can accept at once. I mean eventually it’ll work out.
I guess the stock market does create an alternative universe because who even looks at fundamentals? I guess that’s the job left for institutional investors (comparatively, anyway).
Also, I tend towards the belief that prices—at any given time—are never meant to directly reflect reality. Only long-term aggregates are meant to.
I felt connected, but did find it funny when Satya Nadella said this when discussing search:
I’ll never forget my first query I did on the model, which, I think for me, growing up, I always felt, if only I could read Rumi translated into Urdu translated into English, that is my dream. I just put that in as one long query, and it was magical to see it generated. And I said, “Man, this is different.”
Good to know Satya enjoys a good love poem as well 🤷♀️
Although, I really don’t understand this whole deal with translating it in and out of multiple languages. I think it’ll just make me feel uncomfortable to reread the poems I love reorganised.
Sounds like the interviewer thinks it’s a facade ahah
Also, I really want to try out Github Copilot. Not sure if it’ll be relevant for a while though…
Here are some bits from Ben Evans’ Presentation:
To see valuations rise at practically twice the speed as the dotcom period is fascinating. I’m sensing marketeers suffering most here. No more cheeky copy-writing 😢 Ah I’m gunna miss the good old days. That was fun.
Apple caught the trend against advertising, and nipped other big tech firms in the process. I guess hardware will always control software. No matter how big software grows.
Though I have to say, I wonder if being the only more (/longer) hardware-focused of the big tech companies may also have played a role. The huge hiring boom seems to have been software-focused.
Also, I can imagine that trends that are easy to hop on would also be easy to hop off. But like having incorporated an gotten used to a piece of hardware also means that it is less likely you’d be comfortable switching (though Peloton may make me doubt this ahaha).
Amazon having overtaken Walmart is also scary. And then Amazon Fresh, and yenno, where that could further lead…
I did find it quite interesting that Amazon’s ad business overtook the Prime revenue in 2022. This is quite contrary to popular shifts (perhaps just in startup land then).
It is interesting to see that Anker has built a $2bn phone accessory brand on Amazon. I bought some earphones from them which I liked, but had to replace them like 3 times lol
And damn I can’t believe Shein has surpassed Zara and H&M. The latter gotta really up their online retail game :// I guess auto-scan self-checkouts are sufficing ahah
RE Disney D2C video vs Netflix Operating Income: Moving away from a mature business model is more expensive than a new-comer creating a new business model.
I guess the difference between Netflix and YouTube is that although they both started off without own content, Netflix still gate-kept what content was let on, while in YouTube’s case, it was open-access, and that was the whole selling point. So their transition into in-house content creation is a bit trickier to package.
I would disagree with Ben’s categorization on the above.
I think Uber and Airbnb also just belongs to the “Software is just a new channel” category.
Here too the same “product“ has always been offered (taxis, hotels) and the same experience even (they also began migrating to mobile apps), if only the emotions being evolved a bit. I would argue that the product has not fundamentally changed. If you could separate product from experience, I would agree you could argue the experience has changed. But then, that is the same for Netflix and Shein. The details are always blown up to be more than they really mean.
I liked this quote Ben used:
“There are two ways to make money. You can bundle, or you can unbundle.“
—Jim Barksdale
I thought this was funny:
I guess that was a circumstantial comment. hehe
Platform shifts are just what push out the incumbents. And I don’t think that is such a bad thing. Everything comes in turns. You gotta know when it’s your turn, when it’s not yet, and when it’s over.
Ben uses a perfect Keynes quote: ‘in the long term we’re all dead’.
I think platform/channel shifts are just better done by new-entrants. It is just a bit ambitious for old-timers I think (Ben actually goes on about this in the essay I refer to below). Though seems possible. And seems like the challenge Zuckerberg is taking on. We have no historical evidence that this is the kind of thing he’d be good for though.
Though I would like to do a PSA: Innovation is good, but hype is bad (or can only serve as an undeserved initial boost that must be sustained by differing behavior).
This was also funny:
“That’s clever, but so what?” is so my new motto.
I think this accurately encapsulates every modern pop song:
I absolutely loved this presentation and found it just the right amount of witty. So cool.
And thanks to Howard Lindzon for pointing towards this great Ben essay as well:
Once upon a time, IBM, and then Microsoft, could make people do things they didn’t want to do. Not today. Being rich is not the same as being powerful.
I guess having the ability to make people do things they don’t want to do usually ends up with pretty bad things being done :/
Here, the argument for anti-trust as the decisive factor generally acknowledges that nothing in the actual judgement or remedies that were imposed had any specific effect on Microsoft’s mobile efforts, but instead says that Microsoft somehow became less good at execution or aggression as a result.
There are two problems with this. The first is that it wasn’t remotely apparent in 2007 that Microsoft wasn’t being aggressive in mobile. After all, Microsoft didn’t ‘miss’ mobile - it had started with the launch of Windows CE in 1996, and accelerated with PocketPC in 2001, and it had a whole bunch of ‘Windows’ smartphones on the market when the iPhone launched.
Microsoft was very aggressive and very well resourced and yet failed totally, just like Nokia, which dominated the actual phone business in 2007 and now doesn’t make phones at all, because the whole basis of competition changed and none of their assets had any value.
This is the perfect cautionary tale for Meta.
And I loved this analogy:
But there are several ways that a moat can stop working. Sometimes the King orders you to fill in the moat and knock down the walls. This is the deus ex machina of state intervention - of anti-trust investigations and trials. But sometimes the river changes course, or the harbour silts up, or someone opens a new pass over the mountains, or the trade routes move, and the castle is still there and still impregnable but slowly stops being important. This is what happened to IBM and Microsoft.
And this is just so goddamn beautiful:
The competition isn’t another mainframe company or another PC operating system - it’s something that solves the same underlying user needs in very different ways, or creates new ones that matter more. The web didn’t bridge Microsoft’s moat - it went around, and made it irrelevant.
IBM and Microsoft each only got 20 years.
And it sounds like Meta’s 20 years is going to come up soon. And so it goes.
The only way to compete was with a totally new platform and totally new assumptions about how it would work, and ‘dump our platform and build an entirely new one’ is always a near-death experience in technology. Failing to make it isn’t about a lack of aggression or execution - it’s that it’s really hard.
Yes, yes, and yes. What I was saying earlier.
Ah gosh Ben just sums it up perfectly:
[T]he problem comes when people claim that somehow these companies are immortal - to say that is to reject all past evidence, and to claim that somehow there will never be another generational change in tech, which seems unwise.
In honor of my current reading at uni, here’s an extra quote for today:
“I learned it without being forced by threats of punishment, because it was my own wish to be able to give expression to my thoughts.“
—St. Augustine, Confessions
Oooo and note-to-self: I really want to watch this React Documentary
Anyways, that’s all for today!
With love,
Angeline