On the full-stack point, the cloud line's arc from the 10-Ks: Google Cloud went from $8.9B in FY19 to $58.7B in FY25, and grew 82% Y/Y in the latest quarter - 21% of Alphabet's revenue now. Drawn to scale at bastionmemos.com.
Altman's inertia point maps directly onto what I see with Indian salaried clients: they delay SIPs assuming salary jumps will cover it, but career growth is as sticky as corporate adoption.
The same inertia that protects incumbents also protects stable jobs — yet medical inflation doesn't wait for AI to compound.
I think guys like Altman, Musk, Bezos, Jobs, Gates etc. think they can distort everything around them. This gives them power to change things, but also scary blinders to how their changes could turn out.
I think I was wrong about a few things, but one of them, in terms of the speed, is that the economy just has so much inertia. People keep doing the same things they’re doing. They keep buying from the same company. They keep wanting to use their tools in the same way.
This concerns me slightly, if he's supposed to be so clever. I'm not a great brain, though I am older than him, but I knew this to be true. So what other fairly obvious things do he (& other Silicon Valley 'Alphas' not know?
I don't want to be overly cynical, but I do worry somewhat.
Thanks Tom! I appreciate the comments, as always! 💚 🥃
I suspect that this is a case of calibration. Not that he didn't know that at all, but that it's worse than he thought. Or at least that's how I interpreted it. If you live long enough in startup world, it's probably easy to get disconnected from a lot of other parts of the economy. You may know about it in theory, but you can still be miscalibrated.
On the full-stack point, the cloud line's arc from the 10-Ks: Google Cloud went from $8.9B in FY19 to $58.7B in FY25, and grew 82% Y/Y in the latest quarter - 21% of Alphabet's revenue now. Drawn to scale at bastionmemos.com.
Altman's inertia point maps directly onto what I see with Indian salaried clients: they delay SIPs assuming salary jumps will cover it, but career growth is as sticky as corporate adoption.
The same inertia that protects incumbents also protects stable jobs — yet medical inflation doesn't wait for AI to compound.
Discipline now beats hypothetical future raises.
Indeed
I think guys like Altman, Musk, Bezos, Jobs, Gates etc. think they can distort everything around them. This gives them power to change things, but also scary blinders to how their changes could turn out.
There's definitely a lot of that going on. Massive ambition often comes with massive narcissism, your strengths and your weaknesses are linked.
Thanks as always.
I think I was wrong about a few things, but one of them, in terms of the speed, is that the economy just has so much inertia. People keep doing the same things they’re doing. They keep buying from the same company. They keep wanting to use their tools in the same way.
This concerns me slightly, if he's supposed to be so clever. I'm not a great brain, though I am older than him, but I knew this to be true. So what other fairly obvious things do he (& other Silicon Valley 'Alphas' not know?
I don't want to be overly cynical, but I do worry somewhat.
Thanks Tom! I appreciate the comments, as always! 💚 🥃
I suspect that this is a case of calibration. Not that he didn't know that at all, but that it's worse than he thought. Or at least that's how I interpreted it. If you live long enough in startup world, it's probably easy to get disconnected from a lot of other parts of the economy. You may know about it in theory, but you can still be miscalibrated.