It’s going to be a more common occurrence. If you’re buying a company in distress, you don’t really care about the common shareholders. You pay the employees you want to keep via guarantees.
This is especially true when you can use AI to code an almost good enough competitor for cheap.
Is photography an example? The painters (to misappropriate an analogy from Paul Graham [0]) had to content with photos that were as accurate at a fraction of the time. Painting lost much of its so called practical use, and even hobbyists were impacted by a much more efficient tool. And then photography became an art. And digital disrupted analog, and phones disrupted the rest of digital. Professional and hobbyist painters pivoted too, moving from capturing realism to abstract and symbolic styles. And hobbyist art continues in analog and digital photography.
Net - hobbyist programming will change, but not necessarily go away. It will morph into “what doesn’t this linear algebra machine see or know?”
No word on why. I don’t think that it’s their portfolio companies aren’t recruiting. (They’re in a lot of hyper growth companies)
It could be that they’re not effective being outside the companies they support. (I’ve had weak results from VCs saying “talk to this person”)
It could also be the nature of recruiting has changed. I would think that the “your AI talks to my AI” would increase the value of referrals, but I’ve been wrong before.
Iceland had a debt crisis from 2008-2011. Part of the issue is the currency is small relative to global markets, so investments/speculation/shocks from elsewhere have an outsize impact.
They were ahead of the industry in Marketing but not in reality.
Having AI and an army of consultants is the market standard today. This is because it works.
IBM slapped Watson on everything, and claimed a ton of revenue. In reality they had a bunch of customers who hated them for decades of broken promises.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has dealt with IBM over the past 10-20 years.
1 - IBM audits your company’s software usage.
2 - They find a couple servers that someone forgot to turn off a decade ago that nobody uses.
3 - Since it was found in an audit “you’ll lose the 90% discount” and they present the CFO with a $20 million bill.
4 - “It pains us to have to enforce this MSA that your predecessors signed 20 years ago. In the spirit of partnership we can make this go away with a $2 million Watson purchase.”
5 - You get the Watson subscription which you don’t dare turn on.
6 - IBM touts the growth of AI to Wall Street [0] and fires a bunch of old people [1].
This shouldn’t surprise anyone who has dealt with IBM over the past 10-20 years.
1 - IBM audits your company’s software usage.
2 - They find a couple servers that someone forgot to turn off a decade ago that nobody uses.
3 - Since it was found in an audit “you’ll lose the 90% discount” and they present the CFO with a $20 million bill.
4 - “It pains us to have to enforce this MSA that your predecessors signed 20 years ago. In the spirit of partnership we can make this go away with a $2 million Watson purchase.”
5 - You get the Watson subscription which you don’t dare turn on.
6 - IBM touts the growth of AI to Wall Street [0] and fires a bunch of old people [1].
The price tickets sell for will be higher if scalping exists. Demand increases for 2 reasons:
1 - I’m more likely to buy a ticket or pay a higher price if there’s a chance of turning a profit if I can’t go.
2 - Speculators are more likely to buy unused inventory if they can turn a profit. This increases total tickets sold. (Scalpers get paid for taking risk)
I’m not defending this. I’ve given up on concerts for my favorite larger bands due to sticker shock.
All of your points apply to performers who may not sell out, so scalpers take risk, you may buy more, speculators may soak up what would go unused.
But consider Ms. Swift. All of her shows sell out, period. Face value tickets are maybe $400 max, and resell for $2000+. I don’t think she sees any benefit from scalpers. Ditto any performer that is in very high demand and certain to sell out and have unmet demand.
> I don’t think she sees any benefit from scalpers.
If a ticket sells for $2k then the platform gets some massive portion of that (like $400?) - are you sure some of that doesn't make its way back to the artist, at least on the primary sale platform? I would be rather surprised if it didn't.
In addition to what others say, the potential for profiting later increases the initial price.
Think of it this way… let’s say two identical companies are going to IPO. Company one you can sell the shares for a profit later if you like. Company two you can only sell for the price you bought.
This is especially true when you can use AI to code an almost good enough competitor for cheap.
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