3.28.25
selling into local gov, consensus vs. non consensus investing, AI impact on creativity, demand for scarce materials, resilience as key founder trait
Selling into local government is akin to an enterprise sell: Selling into government (not defense tech) was long considered "bad" but it really is a lot like an enterprise sale and for smaller gov can be even quicker. The problem is if you look at it from strictly an ACV (without having to go to council) x # of local governments (not the really big guys), it's a surprisingly constrained TAM. You need to have multiple products and/or sell very big contracts quickly.
Consensus vs. non consensus investing and incentive misalignment: There's a 2x2 for investing between consensus/non-consensus and right/wrong we talk a lot about. Lots of chasing consensus deals (tbd on right but often times funding can lead you to water). Much scarier and lonelier path to find non-consensus stuff and you are more often wrong than right. Feels like as industry, there are incentives (particularly young in career) to chase consensus to get mark ups since time to show whether some of these things will work is often very long (argument that maybe AI will change this paradigm, but I think that may be only for a selective hand full of cos)
OpenAI new model and its impact on creativity: With their new image generator, any image in any style is at your fingertip. As discussed by Ben Thompson, this model is auto-regressive (and thus in many ways far less creative). Will this impact children and thus societal creativity? You can find an image or an auto-text for anything. In some ways, its easier than ever to produce a custom world, story, or character but in another way creativity can only be within the confines of the models perspective. E.g. once open AI shows you their version of a cartoon house, how can you imagine anything other than a variation of that house? The world becomes a pixel by pixel editing process vs. a net new imaginative process.
Increasing demand for scarce materials that power our tech: The demand for AI and technology should cause increasing pressure on the underlying materials required to produce things like chips. Interested in this base layer - how do you optimize for the underlying components? And can you build a fast growing business here? E.g. is there a why now for why a semiconductor business can grow quickly or is it still a game of patience?
Resilience as a key founder trait: Building a business is really freaking hard. Need to be able to take the punches and get back up.