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> The company is the product. If you've ever dealt with Investor Relations at a public company, this becomes very apparent very quick. Core fundamentals as a

> The company is the product. If you've ever dealt with Investor Relations at a public company, this becomes very apparent very quick. Core fundamentals as a business can be strong, but if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis (which does not have to be tangentially related with active initiatives) about your company, you will not succeed. Usually, the onus should fall on PM, EMs, and Sales Leadedship to drive customer outcomes, but the hyperfocus on short term deliverables AT THE EXPENSE of a long term product vision makes it difficult to push back. Very few newly founded or public companies can do the latter - the most recent ones I can think of are maybe Datadog and Wiz (not public but they did drive a customer centric mentality internally). Of course, a lot of this is also due to the extreme bloat that formed in the tech industry in the late 2010s to early 2020s. Teams grew unrealistically large with limited financial justification beyond cherry-picked growth metrics, and this meant a lot of companies lost the ability to innovate frugally or nimbly. Unrealistically high valuations also played a role because towards the end, founders could end up demanding IPO-sized multiples in private markets even without the underlying fundamentals (eg. Lacework's $9 BILLION valuation on what was at most $90 MILLION in revenue). A lot of the current AI products and stories are cost-competitive due to that bloat itself, so some amount of rightsizing will help the industry.

dehrmann 1y ago
> if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis...about your company, you will not succeed. Halfway true. There's a famous quote: > In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. At some point, strong fundamentals will catch up with you.
- generativenoise 1y ago
  In the limit that might be fine, the problem is the amount of damage caused in the meantime and the constraints that puts on future trajectories.
- sailfast 1y ago
  Only for those left holding the heavy, heavy bag.
- nradov 1y ago
  In the short run if you can get acquired then the long run fundamentals don't matter. They just become noise in some larger company's financial statements.
  - newswasboring 1y ago
    This is such a boring dytopia. Everything is just a grift at this point.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    They might not matter anymore for you, but they still exist, which is the sentiment the relevant sentiment for the quote.
api 1y ago
Isn’t all this company is the product stuff an obvious side effect of wealth inequality? There is way way more money up top looking for investments than there is in the hands of customers, so it’s far more profitable to chase that money and make the stock the product than it is to care about the actual product much. It’s a special case of the more general big dumb money problem that happens whenever too much money ends up in too few hands, whether those hands are a government or a few private rich citizens. You end up with this giant piñata of big dumb money and everyone whacking it. In the old USSR instead of the stock is the product it was the appearance in the eyes of other bureaucrats is the product, but it’s kind of the same phenomenon. The customer isn’t the customer.
- Avicebron 1y ago
  I would be willing to bet addiction in general (gambling, drug, dopamine, etc) is probably a symptom/side effect of wealth inequality. Desperation -> "relatively cheap method of short term emotional/sensory boost" -> Further Desperation not mitigated by outside forces -> repeat
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Then rich people would never be addicted to things, but a history of musicians dying from drug overdoses says that's not true. Addiction is a deep topic that doesn't simplify into one neat little pet theory for it.
    - Avicebron 1y ago
      Well it's not a neat little pet theory though, it's an opening up of the conversation, thinking in binary.. It's a "poor vs rich" disease isn't helpful. Thinking in gradients is... "It's 50% more likely in people with this income level vs 10% in this other population", that's still a problem. The point is to address problems, not hand wave them away as "complicated" etc etc, something something engineering
      - fragmede 1y ago
mschuster91 1y ago
> A lot of the current AI products and stories are cost-competitive due to that bloat itself, so some amount of rightsizing will help the industry. The problem is, any amount of rightsizing has the potential to tank the entire economy. Too big to fail, just that it isn't banks this time but a bunch of companies who went all in on "AI".
- bgnn 1y ago
  Capitalism as we know it so far only reacts after a crash happens because of the fear of crashing the economy with any corrective action. My very personal opinion is this is more psychological than scientific.
  - Jensson 1y ago
    No, the reason is because these "crashes" are very small so on average you lose more trying to avoid them than just staying invested. The emotional part is trying to avoid them, the rational part isn't.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > Capitalism as we know it so far only reacts after a crash happens because of the fear of crashing the economy with any corrective action. Inevitable when you tie the pension of people to the performance of the stonk markets.

dehrmann 1y ago

> if you cannot craft a unique story or thesis...about your company, you will not succeed. Halfway true. There's a famous quote: > In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine. At some point, strong fundamentals will catch up with you.

generativenoise 1y ago
In the limit that might be fine, the problem is the amount of damage caused in the meantime and the constraints that puts on future trajectories.
sailfast 1y ago
Only for those left holding the heavy, heavy bag.
nradov 1y ago
In the short run if you can get acquired then the long run fundamentals don't matter. They just become noise in some larger company's financial statements.
- newswasboring 1y ago
  This is such a boring dytopia. Everything is just a grift at this point.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  They might not matter anymore for you, but they still exist, which is the sentiment the relevant sentiment for the quote.

api 1y ago

Isn’t all this company is the product stuff an obvious side effect of wealth inequality? There is way way more money up top looking for investments than there is in the hands of customers, so it’s far more profitable to chase that money and make the stock the product than it is to care about the actual product much. It’s a special case of the more general big dumb money problem that happens whenever too much money ends up in too few hands, whether those hands are a government or a few private rich citizens. You end up with this giant piñata of big dumb money and everyone whacking it. In the old USSR instead of the stock is the product it was the appearance in the eyes of other bureaucrats is the product, but it’s kind of the same phenomenon. The customer isn’t the customer.

Avicebron 1y ago
I would be willing to bet addiction in general (gambling, drug, dopamine, etc) is probably a symptom/side effect of wealth inequality. Desperation -> "relatively cheap method of short term emotional/sensory boost" -> Further Desperation not mitigated by outside forces -> repeat
- fragmede 1y ago
  Then rich people would never be addicted to things, but a history of musicians dying from drug overdoses says that's not true. Addiction is a deep topic that doesn't simplify into one neat little pet theory for it.
  - Avicebron 1y ago
    Well it's not a neat little pet theory though, it's an opening up of the conversation, thinking in binary.. It's a "poor vs rich" disease isn't helpful. Thinking in gradients is... "It's 50% more likely in people with this income level vs 10% in this other population", that's still a problem. The point is to address problems, not hand wave them away as "complicated" etc etc, something something engineering
    - fragmede 1y ago

mschuster91 1y ago

> A lot of the current AI products and stories are cost-competitive due to that bloat itself, so some amount of rightsizing will help the industry. The problem is, any amount of rightsizing has the potential to tank the entire economy. Too big to fail, just that it isn't banks this time but a bunch of companies who went all in on "AI".

bgnn 1y ago
Capitalism as we know it so far only reacts after a crash happens because of the fear of crashing the economy with any corrective action. My very personal opinion is this is more psychological than scientific.
- Jensson 1y ago
  No, the reason is because these "crashes" are very small so on average you lose more trying to avoid them than just staying invested. The emotional part is trying to avoid them, the rational part isn't.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > Capitalism as we know it so far only reacts after a crash happens because of the fear of crashing the economy with any corrective action. Inevitable when you tie the pension of people to the performance of the stonk markets.