simplex

smoke tester

[simplex @simplexmethod]

There are Schelling points everywhere, even in product design

[signüll @signulll]

every major company is arriving at roughly the same offering:

persistent memory, email/calendar/messages, browser + computer use, background tasks, proactive notifications, voice, app/tool execution, ambient context, & some notion of a personal agent sitting above everything.

remarkable levels of convergence with very little differentiation whatsoever.

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@kunchenguid that said, the economics of software / SaaS are unambiguously worse:
- compute costs eat into gross margins
- AI makes it much easier to launch competitors (now each niche has 50 options instead of 2-3)
- if you’re relegated to a headless API, do you still have switching costs?

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@kunchenguid yes. in one word - amortization

and this also applies to the compute costs needed to secure software (better to spread that out over a large user base)

[simplex @simplexmethod]

claude, go through every publicly traded software company and figure out if it’s in the token path. make no mistakes

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@atelicinvest The debate about software duplication from AI kinda misses the point imo. Software used by humans is on the decline, whether vibe coded or not. Either your software business has a right to exist in the token path, or it doesn’t. There are a lot of “database wrappers” out there…

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@atelicinvest The debate about software duplication from AI kinda misses the point imo. Software used by humans is on the decline, whether vibe coded or not. Either your software business has a right to exist in the token path, or it doesn’t. There are a lot of “database wrappers” out there…

[simplex @simplexmethod]

Grok Bot is pretty good. The UX of creating new agent chats for different jobs makes a lot more sense to me than a mono-chat (see Instinct, Muse) where everything gets lumped together.

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@ethanrkho https://t.co/t6XeM79l4Y

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@Gegam245074 i also find it's incapable of orchestrating long-running tasks. ends up spinning wheels building lots of superfluous, overengineered scaffolding instead of actually tackling the problem

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@TheCSUGuy @DimitryNakhla totally agree, i would probably put that in the regulatory bucket https://t.co/4FEATeJ1f7

[simplex @simplexmethod]

the big question is what % of VMS has a non switching cost moat (network effect, regulatory / license, cornered resource, etc)

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@partners_road reflexivity…

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@fchollet the trillion dollar question https://t.co/5huUN5susC

[simplex @simplexmethod]

The most important question in the world rn is whether RL will work on non-verifiable domains (ie not code, not math)

If it does, game over. If it doesn’t, AI is still incredibly useful but prob won’t automate large swaths of the economy

[simplex @simplexmethod]

any software whose only moat was creation cost is obviously cooked

software with real* moats (network effects, scale economies, regulatory licenses, etc) will be fine

* do switching costs count? maybe not: if businesses run their own agents, the system of record (CRM, ERP, etc) turns into a headless API - easy to clone and replace

it’s a stock picker’s market now

[simplex @simplexmethod]

the big question is what % of VMS has a non switching cost moat (network effect, regulatory / license, cornered resource, etc)

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@DimitryNakhla the bear case on $CSU.TO is that:
- for every vertical, AI makes the cost to build a niche competitor 100x lower
- agents and computer use make switching costs 100x lower
- instinct/muse-like products are coming to businesses, which might relegate SORs to headless APIs

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@usr_bin_roygbiv yes, unless you can close the loop (agents getting stuff done without you as the intermediator)

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@WillManidis raises the question of what a great ceo looks like in 5-10 years

if you read the biographies of great capital allocators (john malone, henry singleton, etc) they were all brilliant, but their decision criteria was also extremely simple

agents should be able to do this too

[simplex @simplexmethod]

@quxiaoyin agree, “AI transformation as a service” has incentive alignment issues

smart founders are either a) starting AI-native competitors or b) acquiring the incumbent assets outright (see Long Lake, etc)

[simplex @simplexmethod]

ok some of software is dead. but not all of it.

dead:
- horizontal software (airtable, notion, etc.)

alive, but 10x more competition & 10x lower switching costs:
- vertical market software (appfolio, servicetitan, products owned by constellation / roper / etc)
- CRMs, other systems of record

thrive:
- infra
- cyber
- observability
- payments
- APIs sold to agents

pretty straightforward if you think about it from first principles.

[simplex @simplexmethod]

Am I allowed to think that both:
- AGI is here
- software is not dead

[simplex @simplexmethod]

never would have predicted markdown files to become the architecture for AGI

[simplex @simplexmethod]

it might be time

[Stern Drew @SternDrewCrypto]

🚨 GOLDMAN SACHS DROPS DOOMSDAY STATEMENT: U.S. BONDS HAVE NO BUYERS

Goldman Sachs just admitted the long end of U.S. Treasury market is “totally bidless.”

Translation: almost nobody wants the 10- to 30-year debt the U.S. is trying to sell.

No buyers. None. Zero.

While Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent tells Congress we’re in an “illiquid period,” doubles then triples long-bond buybacks, taps the General Treasury Account to fund it and openly says “I am the house.”

Yields are surging anyway. The 10-year has pushed toward 5.3% and the 30-year is even higher, levels not seen in years while Japan, one of the biggest foreign holders, keeps selling Treasuries and bringing money home.

This was exactly warned by Japan’s @yutokanzakireal that the measures being prepared by Bank of Japan will affect the lives of billions of people and apologized to people of the West.

Soon after, Scott Bessent intervened and effectively took over BoJ operations which Japanese policymakers heavily criticized.

If the same ”bidless” condition hits the short-dated treasuries market, the entire U.S. debt market (and global) collapses.

The U.S. debt crisis will turn into a global liquidity crisis.