AI is Not a Gold Rush—it's Electricity
The Signal
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Hey y’all!
I’m happy to be back writing, after taking a week off for Spring Break with my wife, 2.5 year-old and 9-month old (and 5 other couples + ten other kids under the age of five <insert exhausted emoji here>) at the beach in Texas… where you can drive cars right on the sand, which is wild. ‘Merica.
Quick thanks to my friend Adam Robinson for having me on the RB2B Show - over 500 people showed up (sorry to make you upgrade your Zoom subscription, Adam 🙃) for a webinar where I shared what I’m learning around using AI to do fewer activities, not more, but getting much higher conversion rates - to build pipeline.
Speaking of AI, today’s post is all about AI.
But, let me start by saying: I am by *no* means an expert in AI. I'm merely a (curious) student. If there are 100 rungs on the ladder of understanding GenAI, I'm on rung number one (or maybe two). But, I believe that writing forces clear thinking - so, by writing, I am forcing myself to think (more) about AI, its applications, and how I can leverage it. Because, I think we're very early still.
Alright, let’s get into it.
AI is Not a Gold Rush—it's Electricity
I went down a rabbit hole of Jeff Bezos interviews this past weekend. He doesn’t give many—and he’s one of the most accomplished entrepreneurs of our time—so when he does give talks, I tune in.
This rabbit hole led me to a TedTalk that Uncle Jeffrey gave 17 years ago, called The electricity metaphor:
The entire thing is worth watching. In fact, I recommend you stop reading this and go watch it right now. But, for those who don’t have time, here’s the TLDR:
The dot-com boom and bust is often compared to the Gold Rush. But, Uncle Jeffrey says it’s more like the early days of the electric industry.
In a gold rush, when it’s over, it’s over.
Therefore, there’s a much better analogy that allows you to be incredibly optimistic. And that analogy is the electric industry.
There are a lot of similarities between the internet and the electric industry. They are both thin, horizontal, enabling layers, that go across lots of different industries. It is not a specific thing.
What came after this horizontal layer of electricity? The golden age of appliances.
The killer app that got the world ready for appliances—which did not exist before electricity—was the lightbulb. They were not thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They weren’t putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home. No one said ‘hey, I want electricity’; instead they said ‘hey, I want lighting.’
They want what your product enables.
Just like no one says ‘hey, I want AI.’ They want what is now possible with AI. Which is simply a better way to do something.
(Listen to the full Founders episode on this concept if you’re curious to learn more.)
In Uncle Jeffrey’s recent interview with Andrew Sorkin (worth watching), he analogizes AI in the same way as he did the dot com boom in his TedTalk back in ‘97.
Modern AI is a horizontal, enabling layer.
It can be used to improve everything. It will be in everything.
This is most like electricity.
He goes on to say:
There is not going to be a web application that AI doesn’t touch that isn’t made better as a result.
I can’t shake this thought, now that it’s been planted in my brain.
It sounds cliche and pedantic to even write it down on paper. But, I’m going to put my ego aside and say it anyway:
wE’rE sO eArLy.
I think the use cases for AI in GTM are something like 5% known so far. So, in the next few years, 95% of the use cases are going to emerge. They haven’t been discovered yet! The groundwork for AI (“electricity”) is being built and distributed right now. But the applications for AI (“the golden age of appliances”) are still ahead of us.
It’s a very exciting time. It’s also overwhelming and scary and confusing and unkown.
But, I’m choosing to be an optimist in this moment. And build with this new, amazing technology (the “horizontal, enabling layer”) that we have at our disposal. I’m in the process of reinventing myself. Upskilling. Being a student (once again). I’m putting my ego aside to learn this new thing. It’s hard, but I think we’re early here. So it’s worth it. That’s my thesis, anyway.
Let’s see how it pans out in a few years.
Top 6 pieces of information I consumed this week:
I did a 24-hour fast yesterday, which led me to research the benefits of fasting.
Jeff Bezos rabbit trail: turn one, turn two, turn three, turn four.
The Big Switch (book summary here, thanks to my assistant) - a study on the early days of electricity.
Founders podcast (my favorite podcast lately) - #314 Paul Graham (How To Do Great Work) a summary of a Paul Graham essay from 2023 (if you haven’t read PG’s essays… my gosh, they’re incredible; go skim through their titles and read one or two… or thirty)
This week, my friend Kyle Williams put out a short essay on what makes great GTM; I don’t want to spoil it, just go read it (it only takes two minutes)
ChatGPT released its new image model and the internet went crazy making images in the style of Studio Ghibli:
Thank you for your attention. I do not take it for granted.
See you next week,
Brendan 🫡
Great analogy. We are SO early in this.