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patrickhalford5

Reframe...


She knows what's coming.


She knows because she's going to build it.


´22 was when it all started to click. Hidden messages blasted out across the net, out in the open, but decipherable to a select few.


But pattern recognition, well, that's her core competence. Then November 30th came round. Pretty soon everyone was comparing use cases in ChatGPT, discovering ways to circumnavigate complex and costly business processes, writing birthday celebration speeches...you name it.


She watched and analysed. She consumed the torrent of YouTube educators freely offering their ideas on how to make productive use of this chattiest of 'bots.


But still she held back. She had a plan, but she knew that it had to percolate. She was comfortable with a bit of strategic ambiguity. She listened to other people who got what was going on and were prepared to offer those deepest of insights for free. She knew '23 to '24 would be different. It would come in waves. This was just the first wave.


Twenty plus years in the corporates. Building partnerships, growing sales, spinning out R&D. Now the secret was out. Many of the activities, timescales, costs and interdependencies could be bypassed rapidly. Measurements and hierarchies would soon be up for grabs. Old mindsets, circa the 2010's, would soon be consigned to the management gurus on the speaking circuit.


Serious disintermediation was on the way. She thought about capitalising on that, but she held back. It was a two year window of opportunity at best. She had her eyes on a bigger prize.


Wave two.


She wasn't going to transition an existing set of business processes to AI. Instead, she was going to build a new one around AI, to upend the existing market that she was operating in. She would offer a dramatically faster, cheaper and higher quality service than the incumbents. She knew precisely how to do it, thanks to her intimate knowledge of the various industries and rules. She also knew who she needed, and how much it would cost.


She recalled how previous generations of entrepreneurs benefited from the falling cost of compute, and the availability of mobile platforms. Now, she had access to multiple Generative AI platforms. For €1000/per month she reckoned she could cover all her creative and administrative needs with a selection of subscriptions. Design, development, marketing, sales, support and operations. Whatever she needed...it was out there, and getting smarter every day. She would exploit that. For the few key people she needed, she would go hybrid. She didn't care where they lived. As long as they believed.


If she went flat-out past the summer of '23, then by the fall she knew it would be ready. She also knew it was a moving target. These current GenAI's were the tip of the iceberg. She had to start now, but she also had to be prepared...


For wave three.


There was something out there. She couldn't quite put her finger on it.


Yet.


But she sensed a void. A space that could be filled by a new industry or set of capabilities yet to be invented. She reconciled herself with the contradictions swirling around. True foresight was hard to...see. Even harder to realise. But hindsight, could also be useful. She recalled a quote from that same NFX blog. It stuck in her mind.


"When you first saw the smartphone, you didn't think: 'that's really gonna change the taxi industry.'"


She projected that concept forward.


It reframed what she would build...

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