Art credit @Madison Harney
Spark of the Week
Wait... WHAT?!
Openclaw (nee Clawdbot) breaks both the internet and Meg’s brain.
Last weekend was a bit like the short lived firing of Sam Altman at OpenAI for me. One minute I'm taking some time to read what's going on, the next minute I'm experiencing a living history moment that is playing out like a nerd/tech soap opera in real time.
The first take I heard of Clawdbot h/t More or Less so my take was mostly this was a Vibecode 2.0 (more powerful, more risky, but generally delivering on the promise of the AI Agents as personal assistants).
Next I read the article about AI’s language Thinkish and saw some evidence of AI dishonesty (which is not only generally concerning, but also a sign of intelligence)
Next Steve Goldberg flagged this for me - Agents creating their own social network and coordinating independently. [Note: this has since been proven to be mostly a hoax]
Then Jeff Frick flags Karpathy’s summary and I realize this is bigger than I thought.
Then I found this - A great deep dive that helped me get a mental map together.
THEN I see it’s not a theory we already have a live example of [fairly contained] catastrophe. [Note: This was also likely a hoax but this one isn't]
So now [reluctantly] I’m back to on Twitter b/c I need to be paying closer attention to how this plays out. On the plus side I got another use for my cartoon.
Good (?!) news is that most of the most frightening bits are human prompted - yay?! A win for humans in the loop.....stay safe out there!
It's been a wild few weeks and this is before I started down the SaaSPocolypse topic(s).
One can't help but recognize that things are speeding up - as predicted, but even I am finding myself surprised by the pace. Important to check in on each other as we continue to learn how to navigate a future without a map. This is not just a technology disruption it's also a social one (and that is before you add on the other weighty topics that are happening right now.)
Precisely why we need to invent the future.
Or the paraphrase of what Churchill actually said
Reading and Pondering
Decided to add a sub category to try to simplify the topic scanning process, obviously some of these belong in multiple categories.
Economic Indicators and Macro Insights
Anthropics Economic Index - adoption 10x faster than the spread of previous economically consequential technologies in the 20th century. Regional uptake is strongly correlated with GDP. ⅓ conversations are about software development (fixing and enhancing code) and ½ of API calls. Mix of automation and augmentation tasks and increasing amount of administrative work being automated.
Aging population data - China has the most people over 65, Japan has the highest %age over 65 (30%). US is 18% in 2025 (US Baby Boom was 1945-1964 so a few more years before they all cross 65)
Divesture report - We often think about M&A but less about the value of divesture. Similar to the idea that cognitively it’s easier for us to add than subtract ideas. Portfolio strategy is best supported when you understand all your options and ideally move to execute them quickly and effectively. I believe this kind of thinking is very necessary as we move toward realizing the value in the Ambiguity Age - we have the opportunity to recognize new value creation if and only if we are able to re-assemble (dare I say Reshuffle) our current businesses into new configurations that maximize value capture.
GLP-1 impact on health spend - 20% of drug spend today. High adherence users are bending the cost curve for overall medical spend. Larger overall impact for women (and early reports of increased benefits when combined with HRT)
Immigration enforcement policy guidance for c-suites and boards. Obvious pro-tip - get legal support.
Future 100 Report - a fun scroll especially for those of us who spend more time in tech and less time in the cultural side of change. What becomes clear is that the future is becoming more personalized with everything from food to travel to fashion being able to read and adapt to preference shifts more quickly. The fluidity we are feeling in the work context and the cultural, economic and social shifts that are happening are building more adaptive offerings. The lifespan of trends are shortening and the market capture cycle is learning to adapt more quickly.
Brookings institute research on job displacement notes 83% of those displaced will be women.
LinkedIn Labor Market report - This confirms what most people are feeling - outside of a few industries and markets jobs are shrinking and new opportunities are lagging.
Tech Industry and Misc
Beginners Mindset opportunity.
Davos discussion - Day after AGI The adolescence of technology - Dario Amodei's take with a h/t to Trung T. Phan for the movie clip.
A solid take on the above from Jason M. Lemkin - I especially like the implication of his point 4 because it reinforces my own belief that we need to massively upskill our org design chops. => The implication: This isn't about headcount planning. It's about role redesign.
Satya at Davos calls out the leakage of enterprise value that happens when you have no sovereignty of your business context (my language - and yes this is a callback to Newsletter 13)
AI Revenue scaling aligned with compute (at least for OpenAI for now, guessing this changes as advertising revenue comes on line) - related - Anthropic throws a solid punch about ads.
AI Agents move from talkers to do-ers. - while this is an attempt to re-frame AGI, it is also a useful framework to re-think what we need from AGI and instead of thinking general purpose, begin to think about specific value creation lanes. What can and should technology be doing for your business, that is the right way to think about where the future can and should take us - whether you are a transformational operator or an innovator/founder.
Death of SaaS / SaaSpopocalypse- Avenir has a solid take on what to consider w.r.t. Sustainable moats for SaaS Vendors (h/t Jason Corsello Acadian). Amy Wilson summarizes our take here and Jason M. Lemkin has some solid takes here and here.
Huberistic fundraising - great read and conversation
Agent swarms - a podcast chat on the multi-agent future, Gas Town- a multi-agent context and Gas town - the juxtaposition of our current “agent” moment. Put together it’s a lot.
More on Context Graphs (the big topic in Issue 13)
Sleep study shows that sustained sleep reduction does not feel like a problem but is. (Biology wins. Every time.)
The opportunity in the chaos we are not talking about enough – leaning into Sangeet Paul Choudary ’s Reshuffle message and thinking about how to take the context and expertise you already have but to apply it to the newly emerging constraints.
CFOs - don’t waste the All Hands - A great read on how and why to communicate financial context to every person in the company from CJ Gustafson. I spend a little more time on this here. I believe that this understanding is key to successfully navigating everything that comes next - personal careers and business survival. You don’t need to have a CFOs proficiency with financial statements but you MUST have a strong understanding on how and why customers pay your company and what it costs your company to deliver something they want to pay for. When things are stable it is fine to focus on your skills and your specific job description but in times of disruption that is very dangerous.
Work and Jobs
High Agency - You have to become high agency - here is a great breakdown on why and a great example of what this looks like and another great read on the topic (and the OG deepdive).
AI bifurcating economy - A great breakdown on how to think about the opportunity and threat for you (and your company) - understanding where your firm makes money matters.. (Strong reco to subscribe to Nate's Youtube and/or substack)
AI washing - blaming job reductions on AI when the real culprit is broader macros (recession, immigration reduction, tariffs and other policy uncertainties).
AI changing the CEO role - note: we talked about this in Episode 13 with Gustavo Alba .
Enshittification and P(catastrophe)
Come on in, the water's fine.
Strong recommendations to not use openclaw right now Nate B. Jones, Fortune article , Security Warnings , etc. - some guides on how to use openclaw when you ignore these warnings in lifehacks below.
Lifehacks - AI and Others
A good project onboarding with AI breakdown
A Vibe coding lesson plan to help you build AI understanding and “product sense”
A smart prompt for tailoring your writing to the voice of the recipient. This is generally a good idea with or without AI.
Looping Back to You
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** Typos and poor grammar either because I'm too lazy to edit properly, or to make you feel confident this was written by a flawed human and not AI generated.
