Counterintuitively, the wealthiest individuals suffer the largest losses during financial bubbles because they are the most leveraged at the peak with the most wealth to compress. The common narrative that retail investors are hurt the most is often incorrect.
The physical friction of accessing cash in a safety deposit box creates a powerful behavioral barrier against impulsive spending. This makes it a more effective tool for building savings than a one-click transfer digital account.
The massive partnership between Nvidia and OpenAI was negotiated directly between founders, bypassing investment bankers entirely. This highlights a trend where major strategic deals are executed outside of traditional financial institutions.
The rise of AI services companies like Invisible and Palantir, which build custom on-prem solutions, marks a reversal of the standardized cloud SaaS trend. Enterprises now prioritize proprietary, custom AI applications to gain a competitive edge.
Automated AI queries, like a single ChatGPT deep research request triggering 19 Google searches, are likely polluting search data. This makes tools like Google Trends less reliable for gauging genuine human interest and behavior.
While Sam Altman's projection for OpenAI to use 250 gigawatts of compute by 2033 seems extreme, it actually charts a slower growth trajectory than the continuous exponential forecasts from analysts like Leopold Aschenbrenner.
AI is unlikely to replace fields like radiology because of Jevons Paradox. By making scans cheaper and faster, AI increases the overall demand for scans, which in turn can increase the total number of jobs for human radiologists to manage the higher volume and complex cases.
When traditional metrics like ARR or DAUs are unavailable, ambitious hard-tech startups can leverage large, non-binding Letters of Intent (LOIs) from future customers to validate their vision and attract early-stage investment.
Smart city tech often fails to gain traction because it targets diffuse benefits like 'less traffic.' Successful government sales require aligning with the only two metrics that consistently get mayors re-elected: reducing crime and paving roads.
Brett Taylor argues that focusing solely on rapid growth can lead to 'fragile ARR.' The better metric is 'earned ARR,' which reflects sticky, high-quality revenue from satisfied customers and indicates a more durable business with a real moat.
Security tech company Flock Safety found its ultimate proof of product-market fit when a criminal on a podcast complained that 'those effing flockers' made crime too difficult. This demonstrates success in their core mission: making crime economically non-viable.
Unlike the leverage-fueled dot-com bubble, the current AI build-out is funded by the massive cash reserves of big tech companies. This fundamental difference in financing suggests a more stable, albeit still frenzied, growth cycle with lower P/E ratios.