TLDR: Companies being built today will have far greater leverage working on far more advanced technologies. What are you working on today that your future self will be grateful for?
The cost of code, the cost of sales, and the cost of support are all going to zero.
AI is learning to do the monkey on the typewriter jobs.
That technology is already here and we are already in that transition.
Meanwhile, the cost of energy is falling, and many think near-zero is inevitable with advances in nuclear fusion and solar.
Rockets are demonstrating the potential to get to Mars… and return home.
Leaps in quantum computing are happening with IBM set to release Condor this year, the world’s first universal quantum computer with a 1,121-qubit processor.
Scientists are also working on de-extinction, lab-grown limbs, and the long-awaited possibilities and commercial use of of gene editing.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
So what?
Well, there are a lot of so-what’s to these topics, but something I’m most interested in is where the operators will go.
From a recent All-In podcast…
Currently, 70% of all companies that have gone public in the last three years are worth less than the total amount of money they raised—and those are just the public ones, the ‘good ones.’
And since invested capital is essentially a loan, those investors get paid back first, and if you’re a founder or an employee of one of these companies, your equity is essentially worth $0 in the current market.
So where do we think they’ll go?
With incentives evaporating, chances are many will replace themselves (or be replaced by their boards) with BigCo employees. The obvious thing from there is to go back to what you’re best at—building zero to one.
But this time around the cost of code, the cost sales, and the cost of support are going to zero. Products and services will be cheaper, profit margins will be higher, capital required to grow will be less, and the areas they focus on will be frontier—like quantum, fusion, AI, blockchain, and the combination of them all.
For 95% of the world, no one will notice, but over time as major leaps in technology hit their strides, the way AI is today, you’ll look back and realize the operators were working on this technology for decades, not days.
These dynamics are at least in part why building during recessionary periods are actually more of a ‘downshift to accelerate’ than the economic setback it feels like.
So what are you working on today that your future self will be grateful for?
See you Monday.
Refreshing optimism in a world that loves doom and gloom -- so many amazing, achievable things newly coming into focus out on the horizon