Optimising for fun Always wondering - What's the best that could happen?
India
Joined April 2014
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As we get older, our minds get overwhelmed. Life happens. Stress and context keep compounding. An overwhelmed person needs a mental fallback. I think religion does that job well. People surrender their problems to religion to avoid depression. Religion is a survival instinct.
Headstrong individuals change the world. So much to learn.
When Julius Caesar was 25, he was kidnapped by pirates. He acted like they worked for him. They demanded a ransom of 20 talents. Caesar laughed at them for not knowing who they had captured, and told them to ask for 50. He spent 38 days as their prisoner. When he wanted to sleep, he ordered them to stop talking. He wrote poems and speeches and read them out loud. When the pirates didn’t admire them, he called them illiterate barbarians. He often told them, laughing, that he would come back and execute them all. They thought he was joking. As soon as the ransom was paid, he raised a fleet, hunted them down and had every one of them crucified, exactly as he had promised.
Want less is one way to put it. I think of it as a want ceiling. There should be some cap on your lifestyle needs. When met w that cap, satisfaction should flow in. That results into happiness. Most people can’t do this bcoz they confuse satisfaction w lack of ambition. Untrue.
Different levels of utter uselessness, but being the United Nations has to be at the top.
"(UN) report notes young Indians created a satirical political movement. In which repressive state, satirical youth party questions the Govt, marches on the capital, & sits across the table with sr natl leaders", Indian diplomats @Anuj_Swarup hits out at UN Special Rapporteur
Always in a hurry to announce companies are dead. Wait it out. Give startups a chance. Wouldn’t say the same thing when OpenAI has a worse revenue to loss ratio.
Understand apples and oranges but Indian ecosystem needs to be more patient w their founders.
“But you cannot actually use this flying car concept on the roads, what’s the point?” Has the same energy as this tweet-
There are three segments in software companies (not considering core infra):
1. Evolution of SAAS companies: The new age SAAS companies are building domain-specific harnesses and then employing FDEs to configure in your ecosystem. Palantir is actually building this (moving beyond SaaS). Here, if you have domain data in the area we're building, you have an unfair advantage. These are companies that can scale to $100Mn in revenue in 2 years. Fantastic business that will compound. Crazy high on margins too but tough to crack because data only compounds w more large scale enterprise customers over time - which makes the agents smarter.
2. New gen IT-Services: This is about moving core tech services from TnM to Outcome-based. More of what we've been doing at devx. Still people-dependent, so you can get to 20-30Mn in 3-4 years. Margins are high if you get AI token spend and team-size configuration right.
3. AI-Platform players: Companies giving you a platform to build, manage, deploy, govern AI agents. I think this is going to get concentrated w top players. Too many $100Mn ARR folks here who'll die because it's an arbitrage play currently with token spends/burning. Over time, OEMs will eat them.
Focus on AI for users today with a platform play. Focus on AI governance next year.
Lot of work for AI consulting companies.
Was chatting with an AI leader at a large enterprise today and we converged on a pov on how AI initiatives/priorities fall into 3 categories for any company. All have different approach/engagement models.
1) Initially most of the focus is/was on knowledge worker and frontline agents (Gemini Enterprise, Copilot etc). By early next year that category will be mostly done, everyone will have something.
2) Horizontal/vertical agent outcomes had a buy narrative + very limited adoption (legal, sales, CRM etc). Now picking up. This is a proper outcome-based + custom AI native software for business play.
3) As 1 and 2 get messy, the foundation/governance picture becomes more and more relevant. Every company has a different approach here. Most have gone ahead with agents without a foundation, but will quickly get back to the foundation layer. Vertical/horizontal agents are like applications/software. If you don’t have the right foundation and governance, it will not scale.
Good times ahead!
Since a quarter, everyone in Tech/AI consulting and services has been speaking the same language. Same talk on outcomes. We've been talking about it for a year. The pitch has been commoditised. Now, the focus shifts to the ability to execute. I don't think large players have the DNA to do this.
It requires the entire org to be AI-native, in essence, and as individuals. That requires a major re-jig, not just closing more outcomes-based accounts.
Will believe Accenture/Infosys is AI-Native when they fire 50% of the workforce.
Have been spending time in Bangkok on a deal. Fun city. Crazy crowded with traffic, but the people are fantastic and help keep it very clean.
Recommendations on places to visit while here?
