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Your premise that the leaders of every single one of the top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong about a new

toomuchtodo 8mo ago
> Your premise that the leaders of every single one of the top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong about a new technology in their existing industry is hard to believe. Their incentives are to juice their stock grants or other economic gains from pushing AI. If people aren't paying for it, it has limited value. In the case of Microsoft Copilot, only ~3% of the M365 user base is willing to pay for it. Whether enough value is derived for users to continue to pay for what they're paying for, and for enterprise valuation expectations to be met (which is mostly driven by exuberance at this point), remains to be seen. Their goal is not to be right; their goal is to be wealthy. You do not need to be right to be wealthy, only well positioned and on time. Adam Neumann of WeWork is worth ~$2B following the same strategy, for example. Right place, right time, right exposure during that hype cycle. Only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 users pay for Copilot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871172 - February 2026 This is very much like the dot com bubble for those who were around to experience it. https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g78sgf/eli5_what_was_the_dot_com_bubble/ https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g78sgf/... > In the late 90s and early 00s a business could get a lot of investors simply by being “on the internet” as a core business model. > They weren’t actually good business that made money…..but they were using a new emergent technology > Eventually it became apparent these business weren’t profitable or “good” and having a .com in your name or online store didn’t mean instant success. And the companies shut down and their stocks tanked > Hype severely overtook reality; eventually hype died ("Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome" -- Charlie Munger)
reaperducer 8mo ago
Your premise that the leaders of every single one of the top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong about a new technology in their existing industry is hard to believe. It's happened before. Your premise that companies which become financially successful doing one thing are automatically excellent at doing something else is hard to believe. Moreover, it demonstrates both an inability to dispassionately examine what is happening and a lack of awareness of history.
- anthonypasq 8mo ago
  > It's happened before. source?
  - reaperducer 8mo ago
    Seriously? Have you just emerged from a hundred-year sleep in a monastery on the top of a mountain?
    - anthonypasq 8mo ago
      should be really easy to conjure up examples then. where every single business leader has been wrong about a new technology to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
ChuckMcM 8mo ago
Yup, I've been here before. Back in 1995 we called it "The Internet." :-) Not to be snarky here, as we know the Internet has, in fact, revolutionized a lot of things and generated a lot of wealth. But in 1995, it was "a trillion dollar market" where none of the underlying infrastructure could really take advantage of it. AI is like that today, a pretty amazing technology that at some point will probably revolutionize a lot of things we do, but the hype level is as far over its utility as the Internet hype was in 1995. My advice to anyone going through this for the first time is to diversify now if you can. I didn't in 1995 and that did not work out well for me.
- RoddaWallPro 8mo ago
  What do you mean exactly by "diversify"? Money/investment-wise?
  - toomuchtodo 8mo ago
    Sell the risky stock that has inflated in value from hype cycle exuberance and re-invest proceeds into lower risk asset classes not driven by said exuberance. "Taking money off the table." An example would be taking ISO or RSU proceeds and reinvesting in VT (Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF) or other diversified index funds. Taking money off the table - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763769 - October 2025 (108 comments) (not investing advice)
    - ChuckMcM 8mo ago
      What tomuchtodo said. When I left Sun in 1995 I had 8,000 shares, which in 1998 would have paid off my house, and when I sold them when Oracle bought Sun after a reverse 3:1 split, the total would not even buy a new car. Can be a painful lesson, certainly it leaves an impression.
      - fallous 8mo ago
        Heh, I was at Netscape when the Sun-Netscape Alliance was created. Tip of the hat to a fellow gray beard. ;)
rightbyte 8mo ago
The product is the stock price, not Office or Windows. From that perspective they are doing it right.
- alsetmusic 8mo ago
  And this is the broken mindset tanking multiple large companies' products and services (Google, Apple, MS, etc). Focus on the stock. The product and our users are an afterthought. Someone linked to a good essay on how success plus Tim Cook's focus on the stock has caused the rot that's consuming Apple's software[0]. I thought it was well reasoned and it resonated with me, though I don't believe any of the ideas were new to me. Well written, so still worth it. 0. The Fallen Apple - https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/ https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/
- fallous 8mo ago
  The investor being the customer rather than actual paying customers was something I noticed occurring in the late 90s in the startup and tech world. Between that shift in focus and the influx of naive money the Dot Bomb was inevitable. Sadly the fallout from the Dotcom era wasn't a rejection of the asinine Business 2.0 mindset but instead an infection that spread across the entirety of finance.
- autoexec 8mo ago
  In particular it's the short term stock price. They'll happily grift their way to overinflated stock prices today even though at some point their incestuous money shuffle game will end and the stocks will crash and a bunch of people who aren't insider trading are going to be left with massive losses.
  - saghm 8mo ago
    Stock price increases that don't lead to higher dividends eventually are indistinguishable from Ponzi schemes after the fact.
    - xmcqdpt2 8mo ago
xyzsparetimexyz 8mo ago
Doesn't matter what the leaders think if the users hate it and call it slop https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya-nadella-ai-slop https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya...
- anthonypasq 8mo ago
  right because copilot is bad, that must mean no one uses chatgpt, or claude code, or gemini. they only have billions of MAUs, people must really hate it
datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
I find it very easy to believe. The pressures that select for leadership in corporate America are wholly perpendicular to the skills and intelligence for identifying how to leverage novel and revolutionary technologies into useful products that people will pay for. I present as evidence the graveyard of companies and careers left behind by many of those leaders who failed to innovate despite, in retrospect, what seemed to be blindingly obvious product decisions to make.
bandrami 8mo ago
Were you around in 2008?
ajkjk 8mo ago
every time these companies make a mistake and waste billions of dollars it is well-publicized. so there is plenty of data that they are frequently and preposterously wrong.
- anthonypasq 8mo ago
  name a technology that every single top tech company has invested billions of dollars in and then has flopped. the metaverse does not count unless google, amazon, microsoft etc was also throwing billions into it.
  - ajkjk 8mo ago
    weird goalpost by that logic financial crashes wouldn't happen
6510 8mo ago
The mistake is simple. It is like the difference between giving you many tools to use vs making you the tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec
- autoexec 8mo ago
  I get the feeling that a lot of people using AI, feeding it their private data, and trusting what it tells them are certainly being tools.
vor_ 8mo ago
This industry has seen several bubbles in its existence. Many previously top companies didn't even survive them.
pjc50 8mo ago
> top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong There's another post on the front page about the 2008 financial crisis, which was almost exactly that. Investors are vulnerable to herd mentality. Especially as it's hard to be "right but early" and watch everyone else making money hand over fist while you stand back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008
- anthonypasq 8mo ago
  this was the top 10 companies in the s and p in 2008 Rank,Company 1,Exxon Mobil 2,General Electric (GE) 3,Microsoft 4,Procter & Gamble 5,Chevron 6,Johnson & Johnson 7,AT&T 8,Walmart 9,JPMorgan Chase 10,Berkshire Hathaway 1 financial institution. 8 of the top 10 currently are tech companies. its completely different

toomuchtodo 8mo ago

> Your premise that the leaders of every single one of the top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong about a new technology in their existing industry is hard to believe. Their incentives are to juice their stock grants or other economic gains from pushing AI. If people aren't paying for it, it has limited value. In the case of Microsoft Copilot, only ~3% of the M365 user base is willing to pay for it. Whether enough value is derived for users to continue to pay for what they're paying for, and for enterprise valuation expectations to be met (which is mostly driven by exuberance at this point), remains to be seen. Their goal is not to be right; their goal is to be wealthy. You do not need to be right to be wealthy, only well positioned and on time. Adam Neumann of WeWork is worth ~$2B following the same strategy, for example. Right place, right time, right exposure during that hype cycle. Only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 users pay for Copilot - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871172 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46871172 - February 2026 This is very much like the dot com bubble for those who were around to experience it. https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g78sgf/eli5_what_was_the_dot_com_bubble/ https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1g78sgf/... > In the late 90s and early 00s a business could get a lot of investors simply by being “on the internet” as a core business model. > They weren’t actually good business that made money…..but they were using a new emergent technology > Eventually it became apparent these business weren’t profitable or “good” and having a .com in your name or online store didn’t mean instant success. And the companies shut down and their stocks tanked > Hype severely overtook reality; eventually hype died ("Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome" -- Charlie Munger)

reaperducer 8mo ago

Your premise that the leaders of every single one of the top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong about a new technology in their existing industry is hard to believe. It's happened before. Your premise that companies which become financially successful doing one thing are automatically excellent at doing something else is hard to believe. Moreover, it demonstrates both an inability to dispassionately examine what is happening and a lack of awareness of history.

anthonypasq 8mo ago
> It's happened before. source?
- reaperducer 8mo ago
  Seriously? Have you just emerged from a hundred-year sleep in a monastery on the top of a mountain?
  - anthonypasq 8mo ago
    should be really easy to conjure up examples then. where every single business leader has been wrong about a new technology to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

ChuckMcM 8mo ago

Yup, I've been here before. Back in 1995 we called it "The Internet." :-) Not to be snarky here, as we know the Internet has, in fact, revolutionized a lot of things and generated a lot of wealth. But in 1995, it was "a trillion dollar market" where none of the underlying infrastructure could really take advantage of it. AI is like that today, a pretty amazing technology that at some point will probably revolutionize a lot of things we do, but the hype level is as far over its utility as the Internet hype was in 1995. My advice to anyone going through this for the first time is to diversify now if you can. I didn't in 1995 and that did not work out well for me.

RoddaWallPro 8mo ago
What do you mean exactly by "diversify"? Money/investment-wise?
- toomuchtodo 8mo ago
  Sell the risky stock that has inflated in value from hype cycle exuberance and re-invest proceeds into lower risk asset classes not driven by said exuberance. "Taking money off the table." An example would be taking ISO or RSU proceeds and reinvesting in VT (Vanguard Total World Stock Index Fund ETF) or other diversified index funds. Taking money off the table - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45763769 - October 2025 (108 comments) (not investing advice)
  - ChuckMcM 8mo ago
    What tomuchtodo said. When I left Sun in 1995 I had 8,000 shares, which in 1998 would have paid off my house, and when I sold them when Oracle bought Sun after a reverse 3:1 split, the total would not even buy a new car. Can be a painful lesson, certainly it leaves an impression.
    - fallous 8mo ago
      Heh, I was at Netscape when the Sun-Netscape Alliance was created. Tip of the hat to a fellow gray beard. ;)

rightbyte 8mo ago

The product is the stock price, not Office or Windows. From that perspective they are doing it right.

alsetmusic 8mo ago
And this is the broken mindset tanking multiple large companies' products and services (Google, Apple, MS, etc). Focus on the stock. The product and our users are an afterthought. Someone linked to a good essay on how success plus Tim Cook's focus on the stock has caused the rot that's consuming Apple's software[0]. I thought it was well reasoned and it resonated with me, though I don't believe any of the ideas were new to me. Well written, so still worth it. 0. The Fallen Apple - https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/ https://mattgemmell.scot/the-fallen-apple/
fallous 8mo ago
The investor being the customer rather than actual paying customers was something I noticed occurring in the late 90s in the startup and tech world. Between that shift in focus and the influx of naive money the Dot Bomb was inevitable. Sadly the fallout from the Dotcom era wasn't a rejection of the asinine Business 2.0 mindset but instead an infection that spread across the entirety of finance.
autoexec 8mo ago
In particular it's the short term stock price. They'll happily grift their way to overinflated stock prices today even though at some point their incestuous money shuffle game will end and the stocks will crash and a bunch of people who aren't insider trading are going to be left with massive losses.
- saghm 8mo ago
  Stock price increases that don't lead to higher dividends eventually are indistinguishable from Ponzi schemes after the fact.
  - xmcqdpt2 8mo ago

xyzsparetimexyz 8mo ago

Doesn't matter what the leaders think if the users hate it and call it slop https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya-nadella-ai-slop https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/microsoft-satya...

anthonypasq 8mo ago
right because copilot is bad, that must mean no one uses chatgpt, or claude code, or gemini. they only have billions of MAUs, people must really hate it

datsci_est_2015 8mo ago

I find it very easy to believe. The pressures that select for leadership in corporate America are wholly perpendicular to the skills and intelligence for identifying how to leverage novel and revolutionary technologies into useful products that people will pay for. I present as evidence the graveyard of companies and careers left behind by many of those leaders who failed to innovate despite, in retrospect, what seemed to be blindingly obvious product decisions to make.

bandrami 8mo ago

Were you around in 2008?

ajkjk 8mo ago

every time these companies make a mistake and waste billions of dollars it is well-publicized. so there is plenty of data that they are frequently and preposterously wrong.

anthonypasq 8mo ago
name a technology that every single top tech company has invested billions of dollars in and then has flopped. the metaverse does not count unless google, amazon, microsoft etc was also throwing billions into it.
- ajkjk 8mo ago
  weird goalpost by that logic financial crashes wouldn't happen

6510 8mo ago

The mistake is simple. It is like the difference between giving you many tools to use vs making you the tool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRq_SAuQDec

autoexec 8mo ago
I get the feeling that a lot of people using AI, feeding it their private data, and trusting what it tells them are certainly being tools.

vor_ 8mo ago

This industry has seen several bubbles in its existence. Many previously top companies didn't even survive them.

pjc50 8mo ago

> top 10 biggest and most profitable companies in human history are all preposterously wrong There's another post on the front page about the 2008 financial crisis, which was almost exactly that. Investors are vulnerable to herd mentality. Especially as it's hard to be "right but early" and watch everyone else making money hand over fist while you stand back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889008

anthonypasq 8mo ago
this was the top 10 companies in the s and p in 2008 Rank,Company 1,Exxon Mobil 2,General Electric (GE) 3,Microsoft 4,Procter & Gamble 5,Chevron 6,Johnson & Johnson 7,AT&T 8,Walmart 9,JPMorgan Chase 10,Berkshire Hathaway 1 financial institution. 8 of the top 10 currently are tech companies. its completely different