More or Less: Apple Vision Pro Failure? — on this week’s more or less we have a ‘spirited’ (shall we say) debate about the state of Apple… on one hand ATH stock price, etc. on the other hand, real questions about their product future (sandbagging their intelligence launch, etc.) - and we have a real more or less strong debate about the Vision Pro ‘Tim’s Legacy’ positioning from the summer… also, I rant about how much fun the Miata is…
Some Hot Takes:
- The State of HBS Allison at the 1636forum.com put together an insanely in-depth report on the state of HBS… upshot is that HBS is probably better off than lots of other parts of Harvard but when it comes to free inquiry and academic excellence, there are serious serious problems there as well..
- Which leads me to …Standard Aptitude … for the last several months I have been working on this platform for testing-based-hiring… theory being that resumes and cover letters (and credentials) are all increasingly BS — but TESTS are really the way to figure out who is best for what roles — I don’t care where you come from, I care what you can do / horsepower. I am increasingly very convinced this is the future and that it is a place where LLMs really do make a big product difference (building good tests / assessments, preventing cheating at scale / making Oral exams practical, AND then scoring non-multiple-choice questions — more on this soon, but it is a THING (and if you want to use I have several tests running on it, and it is free to use / open and live!)
- AI 'Cherry on Top' Businesses— Openphone (one my favorite companies we seeded from zero) had some really cool AI oriented extension announcements — made me think more about a whole group of AI-cherry-on-top businesses we have seeded and I love where the core company is great idea / product without AI works BUT they are ideally positioned to ride generations of AI for even better product and even more efficiency…These ‘cherry on tops’ are what I get really excited about with AI
- New ‘Networks’ Must Be Edgy To Work— I was talking to founders this week trying to build some network stuff — and was really pushing them on the ‘get laid or get paid’ narrative — to build a new successful network you need to be very close to the bone in terms of human motivation AND you need to be edgy — reminder, even LinkedIn — the most boring network ever… was actually SUPER edgy when it launched / caused all sorts of fights about who owned your professional data / resume, etc.!
- Make Capitalism Fun Again — playing poker and talking about the economy — there are some really interesting analogies — poker is super fun and people play hard / rationally when chip-stacks are all reasonably balanced… but if a whale steps in, the game gets very different fast (wilder, people are less committed to discipline, and it is way less fun for everyone IMHO) — I think there is a real story here about making sure capitalism stays ‘fair’ so it stays FUN and people stay committed to it.. when it gets unfair it gets unfun and people come up with new games (like crazy politics btw)
- Oh,…. And why are people so obsessed with MOATs in 2024… don’t they realize that after gunpowder was invented moats stopped being meaningful?
Sam
P.S. Did I mention I am LOVING my Miata — it is great to have a manual car again / making driving fun again!
P.P.S. the lingo CGM is good — that needle you stick in your arm looks HUGE but feels like nothing on way in /…. Data is interesting, but still trying to figure out how to use as a non-diabetic?
sam lessin | @lessin | want to talk | podcast | stop | to get added to the mailing list email [email protected]