4 ms·

The New Gatekeepers in Tech

33 points by xrayarx 4y ago

ksec 4y ago
While Ben-Evans article where never popular on HN to begin with. Largely because of politics and views. Somewhere around 2015 it rarely even reach the front page of HN. It is rather sad.
- aix1 4y ago
  I've not come across his work before and am rather enjoying the deck. Would anyone recommend other analysts who also look at macro-economic trends through a technological lens?
  - ksec 4y ago
    Most analysis have no clue what they are talking about, the rest are extremely biased. From a board perspective, I am not aware of anyone come close to Ben Evans. However if you are interested in Apple, Horace Dediu and Neil Cybart are the two that get most of the basic right.
theGnuMe 4y ago
I follow his work and subscribe to his newsletter. His podcast with Toni is pretty good too. In that work you see him form his overall thesis that culminates in these slides. It would be interesting to hear the talk behind these slides and any audience questions. The big takeaway I got from this is that tech is still eating the world and there is still a lot of potential. It is not necessarily crypto (that's at least 5 years out) or necessarily the metaverse (probably 5 years out or more). Meta has invested huge amounts of money into VR when compared to the investment Apple made in the original iPhone. But Internet enabled commerce has a huge margin to capture based on total retail spending. There is an unbundling of products from aggregators and a too many choices problem probably. A big question is how do you find customers which is basically the "ad" market and the first party data problem. These markets have huge margins but you can leverage the gatekeepers to build successful billion dollar businesses. Another sector is the continued digital transformation of current businesses which has a large cloud workflow component. Both will benefit from the current trends in AI. This isn't discussed in detail but it is not hard to imagine potential use cases which I imagine a host of startups are identifying. I see current AI systems as platforms on which to build new applications. Much like AWS is used to build applications today. This will remain true as long as training costs are multiple millions of dollars. I do expect to see unbundling though as we figure out how to get more with less compute.

33 points by xrayarx 4y ago

ksec 4y ago

While Ben-Evans article where never popular on HN to begin with. Largely because of politics and views. Somewhere around 2015 it rarely even reach the front page of HN. It is rather sad.

aix1 4y ago
I've not come across his work before and am rather enjoying the deck. Would anyone recommend other analysts who also look at macro-economic trends through a technological lens?
- ksec 4y ago
  Most analysis have no clue what they are talking about, the rest are extremely biased. From a board perspective, I am not aware of anyone come close to Ben Evans. However if you are interested in Apple, Horace Dediu and Neil Cybart are the two that get most of the basic right.

theGnuMe 4y ago

I follow his work and subscribe to his newsletter. His podcast with Toni is pretty good too. In that work you see him form his overall thesis that culminates in these slides. It would be interesting to hear the talk behind these slides and any audience questions. The big takeaway I got from this is that tech is still eating the world and there is still a lot of potential. It is not necessarily crypto (that's at least 5 years out) or necessarily the metaverse (probably 5 years out or more). Meta has invested huge amounts of money into VR when compared to the investment Apple made in the original iPhone. But Internet enabled commerce has a huge margin to capture based on total retail spending. There is an unbundling of products from aggregators and a too many choices problem probably. A big question is how do you find customers which is basically the "ad" market and the first party data problem. These markets have huge margins but you can leverage the gatekeepers to build successful billion dollar businesses. Another sector is the continued digital transformation of current businesses which has a large cloud workflow component. Both will benefit from the current trends in AI. This isn't discussed in detail but it is not hard to imagine potential use cases which I imagine a host of startups are identifying. I see current AI systems as platforms on which to build new applications. Much like AWS is used to build applications today. This will remain true as long as training costs are multiple millions of dollars. I do expect to see unbundling though as we figure out how to get more with less compute.