It’s 3 BC. Or 1997 AD
We’re could be heading towards singularity in 3 years, where humans will take the backseat on economic development.
Or following the same path of the dotcom bubble.
So it’s either history or science fiction.
I tend to favor the historical lens.
And why 1997?
Nasdaq PE at 28x, vs 70x at peak mania during dotcom bubble. No major IPO frenzy (yet).
But Shiller CAPE at 40 (90% of dotcom peak), market concentration past dotcom peak, VC allocation to AI 61% (vs 40% in dotcom). Smart money close to fully deployed.
So not exactly early.
2026, like 1997, we should start to see a divide. Real companies (like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo) scaling alongside hundreds that will be dead in 3-4 years.
2027, like 1998, will be acquisition frenzy, like Yahoo buying Geocities for 3.6b and extending until early 1999, when it bought Broadcast dotcom for 5.7b
1999 (2028) it’s the retail blow off top. 457 IPOs. Average first day return 106%. Pets dotcom raises 82m, Webvan raises 375m
2000 (2029) is the pop. Something triggers, like Cisco missing earnings.
Maybe a frontier model disappoints?
OpenAI misses earnings?
Capex slowdown?
Major enterprise write-off?
Buy the dip investors lose their shirts.
2001 (2030) is the wasteland. Dotcom is toxic. Layoffs. Takes 15 years for Nasdaq to recover.
But the next decade is the golden age to build some internet businesses.
Google IPO in 2004. Meta founded in 2004, YouTube 2005, Twitter 2006, IPhone 2007.
Uber, Airbnb, Spotify, Netflix going into streaming. Stripe, WhatsApp, Instagram. All betweeen 2008-2015, despite a global economic crisis.
The future is not dark. But being aware of History helps us dealing with it.
what won’t change in 5 years?
- humans will need to eat food
- food will be produced mostly the same way
- mining will be mostly done the same way
- planes won’t change meaningfully
- bitcoin won’t be used for transactions
- soccer will remain the most popular sport in the world
- democracy will remain the dominant form of government in the west
- immigration will still be politically contentious
- Swiss watches will remain the main luxury item for men
- people will still prefer in-person experiences for major life events
- home ownership will still be a major life goal for many people
- real estate will remain the largest store of household wealth
- hospitals will still need doctors and nurses
- people will still drink coffee and alcohol
- shipping containers will move goods the same way
- oil and gas will still account for the majority of global energy
- people will still want status, recognition, and financial security
- lawyers and accountants will still exist
- most people will still work 5 days a week
- the US dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency
- people will still want to live in major cities
- traffic in big cities will still be bad
- parents will still spend heavily on their kids
- children will still go to physical schools
- schools will still be mostly organized by age cohorts
- English will remain the default language of business and the internet
- bureaucracy will still absorb huge amounts of time
- restaurants will still fail often
- brands will still matter because trust matters
- people will still eat meat at massive scale
- QWERTY keyboards will still be the standard
- concrete and steel will still be the backbone of construction
- insurance will still be confusing
- the tax code will still be unnecessarily complex
- CAC will keep rising
- weddings will still be absurdly expensive
- contracts will still be enforced by courts
- people will still struggle to stay fit
- cities will still be unsafe in some areas
- people will still worry about money
- people will still feel lonely
- most startups will still fail
- humans will still die
Amazing work Ben — I tried the service and really liked the first pass on understanding context and creating landing pages. Created 4 companies to test different scenarios.
While the whole workflow is impressive, the key improvement needed is quality of the ads + ad management.
Ultimately the metric should be ROI on the money spent there bc if that’s negative the customer will ultimately churn.
the orchestration layer is the new interface layer.
as we spend our day coordinating agent workflows (in a model agnostic fashion, local and cloud) and validating outputs (human in the loop, and resolving issues), the ultimate layer to own is where coordination takes place.
@j0hnwang@Kalshi@Polymarket That’s a good point. I like the Coinbase/Uniswap analogy.
I would probably add that Kalshi can more easily integrate (legal/tech) with 3rd party interfaces given Robinhood.
@j0hnwang@Kalshi@Polymarket Yeah but US is too large.
Coinbase operates in 100+ countries, yet 83% of their revenue is US.
And so far, there was no competition for Kalshi in the US.