Rafi Aviav

tech sympathiser

[Rafi Aviav @rafiaviav]

@Gol_agha C. N

[Maurizio @themgmtconsult]

Worked 2 decades in in consulting.

Made Partner in my 30s.
Led teams of 100+ people.
Run 9-figure client portfolios.
Lived and worked in 4 continents.

Young people are entering the workforce at a strange moment.

AI can draft your emails, build your slides, write your code, analyse your data, simulate your voice.

The default advice sounds smart:

"Upskill"
"Learn AI"
"Be adaptable"

Obvious stuff.

Let me give you 5 slightly heretical (but useful) ideas if you actually want leverage in the AI age.

Not survival. Leverage.

1) LEARN TO SELL BEFORE YOU LEARN TO BUILD

Everyone is learning to build with AI; who's learning to sell?

Because production is cheap, distribution is not.

In my experience, markets reward those who can convince others that something should exist and then align capital, people & narrative around it.

E.g., Steve Jobs didn't invent the GUI, the MP3 player, or the smartphone. He sold a vision of WHY they were cool.

Or Elon Musk. You can argue about him all day, but he bends capital markets through narrative force.

Young people obsess over becoming technically formidable. Good, but if you can't:

> articulate a problem in a way that feels urgent
> create emotional energy around a solution
> negotiate compensation/scope
> pitch yourself w/o sounding desperate

AI will outperform you on the build, and someone else will capture the upside.

2) BUILD SENSE-MAKING

AI can generate infinite variations but it can't reliably tell you which one is elegant.

You need pattern recognition + aesthetic + strategic sensemaking.

You need the extraordinarily valuable ability to say "This feels right"... and be correct 90% of times.

Steve Jobs called it "taste".
Designers call it judgment.
I prefer discernment.

Where does it come from?

Exposure. Feedback. Long apprenticeship. Studying history. Reading widely. Being around people better than you. Caring about the craft.

Everyone can create, but can you curate?

That's the challenge I'm giving myself.

3) CHASE POSITION

AI makes you faster.

So what?

Speed in the wrong direction is basically accelerated irrelevance.

Young professionals obsess over productivity hacks, automating emails, summarise meetings, generate slide drafts.

BS.

Meanwhile, someone else is positioning themselves closer to revenue, clients, capital allocation.

You want exposure to projects with visibility, problems tied to money, roles adjacent to decision-makers.

If you become the most efficient note-taker in the company, AI will replace you.

If you become the person who reframes what the company should be doing, it won't.

Simple.

4) LEARN TO WORK WITH AFRAID HUMANS

I see AI is making people anxious.

Managers worry about irrelevance. Employees worry about layoffs. Executives worry about being disrupted.

Walk into that fear and stabilise people:

> explain AI w/o hype
> show people how it augments rather than humiliates them
> design transitions instead of revolutions

Look at Satya Nadella. He pivoted Microsoft to cloud & AI, and changed the internal psychology of the firm from know-it-all to learn-it-all.

If you understand identity & ego, you will navigate the AI era far better than someone who just knows Python.

5) OPTIMISE FOR OPTION VALUE

Prestige brands still matter.

McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, Google still open doors.

But if you optimise purely for logo collection, you might wake up one morning highly employable and strategically constrained.

The AI era will produce volatility, with entire functions that will shrink and new ones that will explode.

Option value means:

> skills that transfer
> geographic flexibility
> intellectual independence
> networks that span industries
> income streams that are not singular

Status feels good today but options protect you tomorrow.

Chase convexity: small downside, large upside exposure.

You want an identity not fully fused with your employer. When layoffs come (they will) your sense of self doesn't disintegrate.

All the best!

[Dr. Eli David @DrEliDavid]

Former British 🇬🇧 PM @BorisJohnson: “Everybody knows that by attacking Iran's nuclear capabilities, Israel 🇮🇱 is doing the world a huge service”

[Eylon Levy @EylonALevy]

Amit Soussana survived Hamas captivity and sexual abuse. This is what she told the UN Security Council:

[Vivid.🇮🇱 @VividProwess]

Palestinian terrorists brutally kidnapped 20-year-old Naama Levy on October 7th.

Her hands were tied to prevent her from fighting back, and her heels were slashed to stop her from escaping.

She has been held hostage for 335 days.

This is why Israel is at war.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

To be honest, I really wanted to respond with this Tropic Thunder meme, but I would NEVER do something so rude & irresponsible!

[Clifford Asness @CliffordAsness]

I fear they will listen to cowards and appeasers like you.

[Bari Weiss @bariweiss]

The first victim she said she saw was a young woman with copper-color hair, blood running down her back, pants pushed down to her knees. One man pulled her by the hair and made her bend over. Another penetrated her, Sapir said, and every time she flinched, he plunged a knife into her back.

She said she then watched another woman “shredded into pieces.” While one terrorist raped her, she said, another pulled out a box cutter and sliced off her breast.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

She said the men sliced her face and then the woman fell out of view. Around the same time, she said, she saw three other women raped and terrorists carrying the severed heads of three more women.

Sapir provided photographs of her hiding place and her wounds, and police officials have stood by her testimony and released a video of her, with her face blurred, recounting some of what she saw.

Yura Karol, a 22-year-old security consultant, said he was hiding in the same spot, and he can be seen in one of Sapir’s photos. He and Sapir were part of a group of friends who had met up at the party. In an interview, Mr. Karol said he barely lifted his head to look at the road but he also described seeing a woman raped and killed.

Since that day, Sapir said, she has struggled with a painful rash that spread across her torso, and she can barely sleep, waking up at night, heart pounding, covered in sweat.

“That day, I became an animal,” she said. “I was emotionally detached, sharp, just the adrenaline of survival. I looked at all this as if I was photographing them with my eyes, not forgetting any detail. I told myself: I should remember everything.”

https://t.co/aCTA8Kin1Y

[Oren Marmorstein @OrenMarmorstein]

London.
Christmas Day.
Your home and dear ones.
What if it were you?

[Chris Rose @ArchRose90]

A satire show in Israel deservedly mocks the BBC again and the disingenuous calls for ceasefire. Wait until the end, it’s worth it. 😂

[Israel ישראל @Israel]

An Al Jazeera broadcast documented the moment that the Islamic Jihad launched a rocket which misfired and hit a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds.

[Hananya Naftali @HananyaNaftali]

BREAKING: Hamas publishes footage of its fighters keeping Israeli children as human shields in Gaza.

[Hussain Abdul-Hussain @hahussain]

#Hamas is in violation of all known Palestinian, Arab, and International (UN) laws.
- In 2007, Hamas massacred 450 Fatah Palestinians, ejected Palestinian Authority (PA) and took over Gaza Strip in a coup. PA has boycotted Hamas since.
- The Arab League endorsed in 1982, 2002, 2023 by consensus (with its 22 members states including Palestine voting yes) the land-for-peace initiative with Israel. Hamas refuses the Arab League plan, its charter says violence is only way to liberate Palestine from River to Sea.
- The Arab League in 1964, Organization of Islamic States in 1970, the UN General Assembly in 1974, Israel in 1993, all recognized the PLO as the “sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” Hamas is not member of PLO, and doesn’t endorse PLO charter for peace (as amended in 1988). Hamas doesn’t represent Palestinians.
- Arab League, PLO, and UN Security Council in its resolutions 1397 and 1515 all endorsed the two state solution. Hamas accepts none of these resolutions and insists on annihilating #Israel.
Hamas is an outlaw organization. It massacred Palestinians in 2007, Israelis in 2023. Its existence causes isolation of Gaza by Palestinian Authority, Egypt and Israel.
For the sake of Gazans and the Palestinian people, and for Israelis to live in peace, Hamas must be dismantled.

[Emily Schrader - אמילי שריידר امیلی شریدر @emilykschrader]

⚠️ GRAPHIC ⚠️
Palestinian terrorists capture body of an Israeli woman and cheer “Allah Akbar” while desecrating her body.

A full scale attack on Israel this morning
https://t.co/xV5g8eBLp8

[Rafi Aviav @rafiaviav]

@TheMakerWayGame Incredible! Unreal!

[Rafi Aviav @rafiaviav]

@NotionHQ @thilokonzok Any ETA for this? Thanks! Super important.

[Rafi Aviav @rafiaviav]

@WoodMackenzie @WisdomTreeEU Great working with you and fantastic to see this very compelling investment proposition now available to investors globally.

[Rafi Aviav @rafiaviav]

We launch two ETFs offering a unique solution for investors to potentially increase the yield they’re getting from the market while tightly controlling risk https://t.co/Vx8oobiK1h