Category: Technology

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Directionality of AI

I had a discussion with a friend over the weekend about AI. There are some assumptions about the value it adds and I wanted to address one of these in particular. The reality is that it’s not going to remove jobs so much as it will make very boring jobs obsolete. The issue is that some believe this reduction of overhead will lead to greater profit and that’s simply not true. It could be if all other things were static and the world simply does not work that way. Growth and Death are a fact of life and this equally true for organizations. If you’re not growing you’re dying. Markets expect that also.

That explained, I believe there are three potential options for AI results in an organization. Any and all of these are simultaneously possible in the same market and all have their own unique strategy tradeoffs.
AI’s three future business fundamental options:
1) AI makes service costs a deflationary race towards $0.
-Many services are commoditized. If your vertical isn’t yet, then just wait about 10 years. Because of the cost red ocean effect of commoditization, this allows you to keep competitive pricing while also allowing the margins to stay the same.
2) AI will allow for maintaining revenue levels and increasing the user experience.
-With the easy problems solved for you’re able to reallocate costs to staff for and service higher level business functions. This provides the end user with a better, more consultative experience.
3) AI will allow you to increase your capacity and reach without cost increases.
-If you can take on 2x, 4x, 10x more clients without increasing costs then you have a greater chance of survival in a disruptive situation. The capacity gained will potentially allow companies to continue growth and gain market share without reducing services.

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Technology Business or Technology Enabled Business?

Over the past few years I’ve had to rethink my understanding of the underlying finances of a business. This is necessary when developing your investment thesis. FinTech is a good example. If you look at the trajectory it shows what people are discovering. A NeoBank that was treated as a SaaS company during ZIRP is being realized as simply a bank because the unit economics support that. This is why so much in a lot of companies needs to be written down.

The prevalence of the thought that “every company will be a tech company” simply isn’t true once you apply the unit economics of the vertical that the business exists within.

Everyone else seeing this same rework to investment thoughts?Technology Business or Technology Enabled Business?

Over the past few years I’ve had to rethink my understanding of the underlying finances of a business. This is necessary when developing your investment thesis. FinTech is a good example. If you look at the trajectory it shows what people are discovering. A NeoBank that was treated as a SaaS company during ZIRP is being realized as simply a bank because the unit economics support that. This is why so much in a lot of companies needs to be written down.

The prevalence of the thought that “every company will be a tech company” simply isn’t true once you apply the unit economics of the vertical that the business exists within.

Everyone else seeing this same rework to investment thoughts?

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Desk Setup

I love the pics insta sends my fees of really slick desk setups. Would love to be one of those people with the really nice. The thing is, I don’t think mine will ever get there. It tends a bit messier than I’d prefer. The reality is mess is where the work happens. So while I’d love a photo worthy desk, I don’t think it’s in the cards for me. Have some work to do.

What about you? Is your desk clean or do you have some projects to roll through?

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Automate the Intern Tasks

I’m running an experiment this year. Anytime there is something that is simple and might be delegated, I see if it can be automated by tech instead of given to an intern.

I’ve been hesitant to do this over the past year due to a value for developing others, so i’m also looking for new ways to intro others into a career that involved more valuable and less busy work.

My start on it was a report I get daily. We’re in the O365 platform so I used Power Automate to
1. drop the pdf to Sharepoint
2. archive the email
3. when a new pdf shows up use a trained ai model to pull data
4. add the data to an excel doc

It’s a daily 5 minute task that won’t have to be repeated by anyone ever again. The way I figure it I’m saving about $140 per month on that one task.

AMA.

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Capitalize on the Tools

I’ve been thinking about AI a little more lately after some recent conversations. Since OpenAI launched ChatpGPT, it’s arguably taken more investment dollars relative to the return than any other investment vertical in history.

There’s a lot of buzz around it. Buzz is fine and value is better. I’ve spent the past several months working within a few AI driven tools and here’s the thing i’ve found. What’s here today, is not tomorrow’s answer. This is not a statement about the quality of the tools, it’s an assessment of the stage of the industry. We’re still incredibly early.

Let’s take co-pilot in office as the example. It’s fine and it’s limited. If I want to write a formula faster then that’s great. It does that. Honestly that’s not where most of my brain energy is spent though. Email, it’s kind of terrible. Doesn’t have the context I do for what I’m writing to the point that my feedback to Microsoft one night was that “A monkey on cocaine could write an email better than this.” Really I was missing the point. It’s a Co-Pilot, it’s not going to do my job for me yet. At the same time a human co-pilot would be better.

Predictively guessing at what I want to say next has been a thing for years that Google already gave us. When you think about how you work, that feature isn’t really that helpful.

So, as i’ve had opportunity to use it, the better value has been found in applying that to automated tasks I don’t like. Stuff like:
-capture the data from this pdf report into excel every afternoon
-find empty time on my calendar and preschedule this
-give me the tasks from this meeting

Writing my email for me though? That’s a ways off. So the question is, what’s the IRR we’re looking for on this money being thrown here and how can you capitalize on the models beyond basic use of a Chatbot GPT?

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LastPass and What To Do Next

Breaking the News

For those of you who don’t follow this type of stuff….LastPass was breached. http://blog.lastpass.com/2022/12/notice-of-recent-security-incident/
First, why does that matter to anyone? It’s a good question if you don’t follow any security news, or maybe don’t know what LastPass is exactly. The short version is it’s largest company that allows you to store passwords for all your things online. If you’re like me you already see the problem here, but to make it clearer I’ll just say that 30 Million people use this service to keep their passwords safe and secure. That kind of treasure trove is like the internet version of Smaug the Dragon’s horde of gold in the Hobbit. You’re just inviting attacks, and that’s exactly what happened.

Wait But Why?

Why would you store your passwords online? Well, there are other alternatives for how to store your passwords.

Continue reading “LastPass and What To Do Next”
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Technology keeps growing and it gives me hope

A while back I was looking into AI a little more heavily after finding some interesting use cases. Mainly two with Crisis Text Line and Bark. At some point I ran across Hannah Fry and her book “Hello World”. One of her arguments in this book speaks to algorithms and is a good understanding of ethics surrounding the creation of technologies.

Continue reading “Technology keeps growing and it gives me hope”
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Trading Scalable for Happier Users?

I’m Agnostic

Full disclosure before I start. I’ve always been a bit of a Windows fan. That said I’ve also been an Mac fan. I sit typing this on my Surface Book while my Mac Book Pro that I use regularly is in the other room, my iPhone is beside me, my son is watching a show on our iPad, and my android tablet is in the bedroom. I’ve said it before, I’m a technology agnostic. Whatever you use to get the job done doesn’t matter as long as Continue reading “Trading Scalable for Happier Users?”