Big Co Frustrations, Palm Springs & The Last Human Invention
What I Learned at School this Week
Howdy Folks,
As I settle into a full-time job, I'm finding myself guarding my focus, more than any other resource.
I’m trying to be hyper-aware of what time of day I'm most productive. When is the best time each day for different types of work (ie: creative vs. tasks)? How I can do less meetings, and just think more? How am I being affected by what I’m consuming throughout each day? Any tips and tricks are welcome!
Let’s dive into a few random topics that caught my focus this week…
Oh, Canada!...(?)
First off, let me say, I checked ZERO of the facts in this video.
Regardless of the perfect factuality of this video, I liked it because it points to the opportunity in finding bottlenecks in commerce. In this case, quite literally as a physical bottleneck — a canal. [Quick side note: the US bought a small piece of Panama, then cut a whole through the middle of it for ships to pass through, so that we could collect tariffs. That is absolutely savage.]
Finding digital bottlenecks is what I’m more interested to explore. E-Commerce is a great example of finding the bottleneck of a transaction, owning that “port”, and collecting a tariff to let folks pass through (see also: AWS).
Anyway, apparently Canada is trying build a new trade route through their frozen northern waters. Check out the video, it's pretty cool. PS - couldn't ships just have a big lightsaber on the front of their bows, to cut through all the ice, as they go? Call the technology "The Narwal".
Palm Springs
Sometimes I feel cliche for putting super 'pop culture' things in this Newsletter. But, things are popular for a reason.
Palm Springs is my favorite move since quarantine started. It's a fun and simple rom-com on the surface, with classic Andy Samberg silliness throughout. But let yourself sink a layer down, and quickly life's biggest questions will bubble up. Why are we here? How do we live in the present moment? How do we make life better through experiencing it with others?
Here is a dialogue from the movie:
Nyles: Yeah. About that. So, this is today. Today is yesterday. And tomorrow is also today. It’s one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.
Sarah: That I might have heard about?
Nyles: Yeah.
Sarah: How do I stop it? I don’t want tomorrow to be today. I want tomorrow to be tomorrow.
Nyles: Right. That’s natural. Unfortunately, that’s never going to happen. Tomorrow will always and forever now be today.
Watch it with the mindset of a quirky, easy-to-watch movie, and hopefully you'll be pleasantly surprised with a deeper layer to ponder afterwards.
How Tech Giants Make their Billions
Here is a fascinating (and dead-simple to read) infographic of FAAAM, showing what makes up their revenue streams.
Three things that stuck out:
iPhone sales make up 55% total revenue for APPL
FB revenue is 98.5% from ads
AMZN & MSFT are gorgeously diversified
Bold prediction: ad models will be a thing of the past in 2030. Data is becoming commoditized and “free” already.
Bearish: ad businesses (ie: Facebook). Bullish: subscription businesses (ie: AWS). Why? People are over the pettiness of their data being sold and just want to directly pay for the value they get from a service. Just this week, Jack Dorsey discussed what a pivot from ads, to subscriptions, might look like for Twitter. Time will tell!
The Circular Search for an Answer
Didn't make it a full month at my new "corporate job" before my work nightmare happened:
The circular search for an answer.
What's that, you ask?
To explain, here is the "based-on-real-events" chat convo that happened yesterday:
GPT-3
They* say:
AGI (general AI) will be the last invention by humans.
*Humans? Bots? The line is starting to blur.
If you're on VC Twitter, you've already seen 100+ tweets about this. If you're not, here's what you need to know:
OpenAI* (founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, among others) released a computer program that can interact like a ridiculously intelligent human.
It's called GPT-3.
Reminder: OpenAI is "an AI development and deployment company with the mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity."
GPT-3 will blow your mind.
A long Twitter thread to explain what it is and show use-cases.
The most in-depth description I read on it: OpenAI's GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since bitcoin.
Someone asked GPT-3 if God is real — the response is incredible.
My take: this is the equivalent of when you haven't seen a cousin in over a year, and they've hit a massive growth spurt. They now (somehow?!) come up to your shoulder! They're still not as tall as you. But they're no longer a two-foot-tall twelve year-old. The progress is shocking — it's a big, and noticeable leap. You realize in that moment, that the next time you see them, they may be just as tall as you, and most likely, one day, they’ll probably be even taller than you…
If I used a template (I don’t), below is what I would have for this closing section. I don’t have anything else to share this, so I'll just leave the placeholder as my closing thoughts 🙃 —
[Maybe a quote to end things? Something witty or inspirational? Anything you couldn't fit in the 5 bullets that's worth jamming in here?]
Unabashedly listening to T Swift's new album from 30,000 feet in the sky,
Brendan J Short