Yan K

Afro-optimist | Tweets are own personal opinion

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

(Concept + Strategy + Action Plan) x Action = Result.

If Action = 0, Result = 0.

If Action = 0 , Concept + Strategy + Action Plan = Time Wasted.

#Entrepreneurship #growth #strategy #LifeHack

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

@Eskom_SA I've just had my electricity disconnected after months of being promised rebilling, etc. back&forth Emails with staff. Making me pay new deposit etc. because my account was terminated without any notice. Who can address such customer ill-treatment? @mteton

[Ari Paparo @aripap]

OMG OMG

https://t.co/c23zQAoZ7I

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

Culture clashes from M&A are real…the exodus of employees after a company is acquired or merges with another is not always some form of protest against the business decision. A lot of the time, it simply because the “new” culture has made their workplace unrecognisable.

[Joe Zappa @joe_zappa]

This was the plot of a Silicon Valley episode (c/o Marketecture).

[Joe Zappa @joe_zappa]

Adtech M&A suddenly popping off.

Common theme: Expanding into a new sector/region to access secular growth and compete with the big players.

Equativ/Sharethrough (native / North America). Madhive/Frequence (local TV). Seedtag/Beachfront (CTV).

[Aaron Levie @levie]

Great move by both OpenAI & Apple. ChatGPT gets a massive distribution boost, and Siri becomes the router for your AI interactions. We’re looking at day 1 of a new era of how we interact with computers.

[AdTechGod @AdtechGod]

This is what AdTech will do to a man.

[SABC News @SABCNews]

A significant internet outage has struck South Africa, disrupting services for thousands of users nationwide who have been left frustrated.
https://t.co/ZXws8Nns65

[AdTechGod @AdtechGod]

LINKEDIN IS DOWN

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

This morning, a Uber driver told me « We are raising children that want to live but do not want to be part of life. » powerful.

Life is not full of roses and glitter, living entails being OK with that fact. For every destination, there is a journey.

[AdTechGod @AdtechGod]

When someone asks me to explain Google Privacy Sandbox

[Ari Paparo @aripap]

IAB task force blasts Chrome sandbox as not supporting most use cases. Google objects to this characterization: https://t.co/OWmfN4D2VY

[Digiday @Digiday]

London-based @WPP said its 2024 plans include spending £250 million in a cash investment on "proprietary technology to support our AI and data strategy." More in this Digiday+ Media Buying Briefing. https://t.co/MdHvKyX0D2

[Business Day @BDliveSA]

France’s Canal+ offers to buy MultiChoice for R46.5bn https://t.co/vp1u6r36EK

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

@Hilllix 😅😅

[Business Day @BDliveSA]

BREAKING NEWS: Robert Gumede’s Vision consortium takes ownership of Tongaat https://t.co/Pa77ytO31s

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

@realsergeka 😂😂

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

@Gu881n5 DOOH

[Yan K @YannickKabs]

@amisijeampy 🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️🤦🏾‍♂️

[David Park @Davidjpark96]

A founder and his son had an AI startup that helped the family earn a living.

One day, OpenAI released ChatGPT and tech twitter cried out “Your startup is fucked, what terrible luck!”.

The founder replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

A few months later the startup doubled in MRR because ChatGPT educated the market on AI and it's use cases.

Twitter shouted out “Your hard work has paid off! What an amazing MRR graph!” and the founder replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

Later that year, a copycat saw all of the founder's success and decided to clone their AI startup.

Twitter cried out “You have a copycat doing better than you now, what terrible luck!”. The founder replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

The copycat couldn't keep up with the sudden traffic and abandoned their project, which lead to many of their users coming to the original startup instead.

Twitter exclaimed “You've outlasted the competition and taken their users, what tremendous luck!”, to which the founder replied “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”

—

I tweaked one of my favorite proverbs and based it on our startup story

I decided to write this because nowadays, I see all this fear-mongering of “holy fuck ChatGPT just killed a million startups because of this plugin or that feature or because of this announcement on dev day”

These posts are balanced by the headstrong founders who post the opposite of “well actually these changes are excellent for our business and now we are going to be a trillion-dollar company instead of a billion-dollar company!!!”

Even if constant anxiety and/or forced optimism about the AI landscape was the optimal way to run a business, it seems like such a draining way to live

Is our philosophy of marching forward and being generally unaffected by the AI landscape a better way to run a startup?

Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.