Overall this is a brilliant list that makes me feel less alone in the world. The part about "too much productivity" and burnout particularly hits. I'm starting to feel stretched thin and frantic, despite getting absurd amounts of things done each day. Just one of the many wise and useful things here.
BUT....I think I disagree with every single thing under "On winners and losers in the AI era". Cloudfare and Stripe are just good utilities. Analytics are nothing - insights are everything - and AI is bad at working with numbers (without a lot of help) and needs a human with context and experience to get insights. Apple is bloated and now in their shareholder-beholden innovation and value death spiral - they just don't know it yet. And fair use - it's too messy to sort out. If a human can read something, recall it, and use it - an AI can. You can't put tht genie back in the bottle.
Always appreciate your takes Wes! Since a couple of these are mine, I'll elaborate a bit more
1) On Cloudflare and Stripe, I agree that analytics are a commodity and it's not that either company will become an analytics layer. In Cloudflare's case, they are positioning themselves to be the arbiter of the new internet / how agents access and interface with web content-- this is something CMOs will have to think deeply about.
Stripe is a bet that "advertising to agents" will look something more like offers/rewards at the point of inference and Stripe is incredibly well positioned here. As deterministic attribution also becomes less relevant, payments data will more and more be source of truth for ad performance.
2) I don't think my Apple take is particularly popular and I didn't love publishing this in the shadow of whatever the HomeView launch was. But I still think this Benedict Evans take is right on the money:
"Apple is clearly screwed by AI. Now all we need is a company that has fundamental structural advantages in making a beautiful device with great hardware, the best battery and camera, market-leading custom silicon and a very strong privacy position - who could that be?"
Overall this is a brilliant list that makes me feel less alone in the world. The part about "too much productivity" and burnout particularly hits. I'm starting to feel stretched thin and frantic, despite getting absurd amounts of things done each day. Just one of the many wise and useful things here.
BUT....I think I disagree with every single thing under "On winners and losers in the AI era". Cloudfare and Stripe are just good utilities. Analytics are nothing - insights are everything - and AI is bad at working with numbers (without a lot of help) and needs a human with context and experience to get insights. Apple is bloated and now in their shareholder-beholden innovation and value death spiral - they just don't know it yet. And fair use - it's too messy to sort out. If a human can read something, recall it, and use it - an AI can. You can't put tht genie back in the bottle.
Always appreciate your takes Wes! Since a couple of these are mine, I'll elaborate a bit more
1) On Cloudflare and Stripe, I agree that analytics are a commodity and it's not that either company will become an analytics layer. In Cloudflare's case, they are positioning themselves to be the arbiter of the new internet / how agents access and interface with web content-- this is something CMOs will have to think deeply about.
Stripe is a bet that "advertising to agents" will look something more like offers/rewards at the point of inference and Stripe is incredibly well positioned here. As deterministic attribution also becomes less relevant, payments data will more and more be source of truth for ad performance.
2) I don't think my Apple take is particularly popular and I didn't love publishing this in the shadow of whatever the HomeView launch was. But I still think this Benedict Evans take is right on the money:
"Apple is clearly screwed by AI. Now all we need is a company that has fundamental structural advantages in making a beautiful device with great hardware, the best battery and camera, market-leading custom silicon and a very strong privacy position - who could that be?"