Sunday, April 2, 2023

Writing well - properties of content


Today, let's embark on a journey to explore the transformative power of content. Whether you're a seasoned writer, a budding blogger, or anyone in between, understanding the key properties of content and their effects on the audience is essential for crafting compelling and impactful material.

When we sit down to create content, our ultimate goal is often to inspire change, to spark a shift in perspective, or to encourage personal growth. We want our audience not just to consume our words but to be transformed by them—to emerge on the other side with newfound insights, knowledge, or motivation.

Now, let's delve into the art of crafting content that has the power to transform.


  • Novel + Useful = Enlighten Me:

Begin by brainstorming ideas that are fresh, innovative, and original—something your audience hasn't seen before. However, novelty alone is not enough; your content must also provide practical value, offering insights, solutions, or guidance that your audience can apply to their lives or work. Whether it's sharing personal anecdotes, presenting groundbreaking research, or offering actionable tips, strive to enlighten your audience with content that is both novel and useful.

Example: Share a unique perspective on a familiar topic, backed by research or personal experience, to shed new light on the subject and provide actionable takeaways for your audience.

  • Novel + Memorable = Engage Me:

To truly captivate your audience, your content must be memorable—it should linger in their minds long after they've finished reading or watching. Incorporate storytelling techniques, vivid imagery, or striking visuals to make your content stand out. Combine novelty with memorability to create an immersive experience that sparks curiosity and leaves a lasting impression.

Example: Craft a compelling narrative that transports your audience into a different world, evoking emotions and sparking their imagination. Use vivid descriptions and sensory details to create a memorable experience that resonates with your readers.

  • Useful + Memorable = Empower Me:

Content that empowers your audience is not only informative but also empowering—it equips them with the tools, knowledge, or inspiration they need to take action and make a difference. Combine practical advice with memorable storytelling to create content that empowers your audience to overcome challenges, achieve their goals, or enact positive change in their lives.

Example: Provide actionable steps, real-life examples, or success stories that inspire and empower your audience to take control of their lives, pursue their passions, or overcome obstacles.

  • Useful + Memorable + Novel = Transform Me:

Finally, aim to create content that encompasses all three key properties—novelty, usefulness, and memorability—to achieve the ultimate goal of transformation. By delivering content that is fresh, practical, and unforgettable, you have the power to transform your audience's thoughts, beliefs, or actions, leaving a lasting impact that extends far beyond the page.

Example: Present groundbreaking ideas or insights in a format that is accessible, actionable, and memorable. Use storytelling, visual elements, and interactive features to engage your audience on a deeper level and facilitate meaningful transformation.


Conclusion:

As content creators, we have the opportunity to shape hearts, minds, and lives through the power of our words. By understanding the key properties of content and their effects on the audience, we can craft content that not only informs and entertains but also inspires and transforms. So, let's embrace the challenge of creating content that empowers, enlightens, and engages—content that has the power to change the world, one reader at a time.






Monday, February 20, 2023

Microsoft vs Google : Strategy wars

With the launch of ChatGPT and open declaration of war on Google from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, we are living in one of the most exciting duels in most recent tech history. Lets analyze relative positioning and odds of who will come out on top in this epic Satya vs Sundar. Behind this lies a fascinating tale of the careers of these 2 Indian American executives who rose up the ranks to head these behemoths in Mountainview and Redmond.

Declaration of war

Microsoft has been making steady progress in the Deep Learning space through its investment in Open AI and the release of Dalle-2 and ChatGPT. While that is regular part of innovation and other companies like META has also been making steady progress in this field, Microsoft went a step ahead with product integration with Bing and open declaration of war. Here is what Satya said : 

Google is the 800 pound Gorilla in the room. This new Bing will make Google come out and want to show they can dance, and I want people to know that we made them dance

With that let us revisit how things go to here.

Google and its search monopoly

While Google is often credited for its technology, Google is able to retain its market share and monopoly in search due to its product strategy. The average user doesn't have much incentive to go and change the default search engine from settings. Google has successfully gated the entry points to search via Android OS for mobile, Chrome browser on desktops and by paying $20B to Apple for staying as the default search option on MacOS. No wonder Sundar Pichai (and not some engineer) became the CEO of Google because he was the Product Lead(read gatekeeper) of two of this products(read gates) : Chrome and Android. This virtually sealed Google's monopoly status on search. 

Monopoly and culture

What happened after Google became the monopoly it is today is exactly what a monopoly would need to do to stay a monopoly : lower profits so that they are not perceived as a monopoly. What better way to do it while stiffling competition by raising costs for competition by hiring developers at premium prices thus increasing cost and reducing supply of engineers. While the strategy was sound and paid off in the last decade, the recent ad recession of 2022-23 has exposed the flaws. Overhiring engineers, paying exhorbitant RSUs, lack of any need to deliver anything at all, delusions of exceptionalism, leads to a level of entitlement and lack of self awareness in engineers unseen in a while in Silicon valley. There are 2 high level problems with this

  • [Financial Mismanagement]As pointed out by investors/hedge funds TCI and Altimeter
    • Rapid headcount growth has led to reckless empire building. Managers reporting to Managers reporting to Managers..... Bloated org structures, title inflation, redundant levels - basically investors in Wall Street paying for the Sushi bar in Mountainview
    • The median compensation at Alphabet was 67% higher than Microsoft and 153% higher than the 20 largest technology companies and there is no justification behind this enormous disparity
  • [Cultural Trainwreck] Google engineers lost the ability to ship because for the last 10 years they didnt really need to. As pointed out in Mice in a Maze Google has 4 cultural problems

The way I see it, Google has four core cultural problems. They are all the natural consequences of having a money-printing machine called “Ads” that has kept growing relentlessly every year, hiding all other sins.

(1) no mission, (2) no urgency, (3) delusions of exceptionalism, (4) mismanagement.


Challenge from Microsoft - surprise ?  

In the meantime Satya Nadella has been playing 4D chess. Nadella was the boss of Bing before he got elevated to CEO in Redmond. So Bing vs Google is close to his heart. While Sundar has been enjoying his Sushi in Mountainview financed by monopoly taxes, Nadella has been plotting Bing revival one step at a time. Key milestones being investing in Open AI, Integrating it to Azure and then Launching Bing+Edge+ChatGPT in a bid to reinvest search. 


Microsoft CEO not only did the product announcements in Redmond, but also openly launched war on Google Search with its ChatGPT + Bing integration : 

Microsoft says for every point of share gain in the search advertising market, it’s a $2 billion revenue opportunity. 

There are several upsides of this strategic play from Microsoft. 

Microsoft Strategic Upsides

  • Asymmetric battle : This is all for Google to defend and any incremental market share win for Microsoft has a huge revenue upside as Amy Hood (Microsoft CFO pointed out)
  • Microsoft doesn't need to gain any market share at all to make Google lose. If it can change customer behavior to expect Search results from 10 link clicks(legacy search) to some mix of legacy search and some mix of conversational AI through ChatGPT(10-20% of the queries), it will be a big win. Conversational AI queries wont be monetized and the change in the mix of the search queries means, Google would also have to serve the unmonetized queries through Bard in order to stay competitive. Even if Google maintains its market share, it will put further margin pressure on Google and thus exacerbate the financial mismanagement and the cultural trainwreck issues highlighted above. This point is very important. It is not a matter of which AI is better, what matters is how will the user behavior and expectation change with the new form of search. Any deviation will hurt Google.
  • Here is rough math to prove the point
    • Google search queries : 300k queries per second
    • Revenue : 160B in 2022, 1.6cents per query
    • Cost : Apple 20B, 24% services margin, roughly 1.06cents per query
    • So Google has 50 cents margin per query which can go to inference costs of an LLM
    • Deploying current ChatGPT into every search done by Google would require 512,820.51 A100 HGX servers with a total of 4,102,568 A100 GPUs. The total cost of these servers and networking exceeds $100 billion of Capex alone

    • Essentially 30B $GOOGL profit could evaporate overnight

    • Looks like Microsoft knows how to flip a monopoly if not beat it
  • Flipping Search monopoly is beneficial for Microsoft because it reduces competition for Azure as Google cannot funnel its monopoly riches to money losing Google Cloud investments any more. 
  • What Google is facing is classic innovators dilemna

how large incumbent companies lose market share by listening to their customers and providing what appears to be the highest-value products, but new companies that serve low-value customers with poorly developed technology can improve that technology incrementally until it is good enough to quickly take market share from established business.

  • ChatGPT is doing free marketing for Azure AI Services which hosts ChatGPT thus increasing cloud adoption
  • Satya Nadella looks like a mastermind wartime CEO who looks like a peacetime CEO

Google Strategic Upside

  • Yes you read that right, Google has an upside here too. While Google bungled its latest Bard announcement and the picture looks bleak right now, the biggest upside is that it could get support that it is not a monopoly in its latest department of justice lawsuit due to this competition from Microsoft. 
  • Google has investments in Cloud hardware and TPUs could get more investments in the future to compete with Nvidia GPUs. So essentially the battle of search could be won or lost on the hardware front which could lead to significant value capture and also change the winners and losers of search

The next 1 year will be an interesting battleground for these two companies in Tech and how the personal lives, successes, failures and tales of two Indian American CEOs influence how they carve out the tech future for their companies. 

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Market Outlook 2023


As we step into the new year, it's essential to gain insights into the market outlook for 2023. Understanding the forecasts and predictions from reputable financial institutions can provide valuable guidance for investors, businesses, and individuals navigating the ever-changing landscape of the global economy.

Feel free to refer to this table for easy access to the market outlooks provided by these leading financial institutions.


Financial Institution

Market Outlook for 2023

Goldman Sachs

Link

J.P. Morgan

Link

Morgan Stanley

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Bank of America

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BlackRock

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HSBC

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Barclays

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NatWest

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Citi

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UBS

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Credit Suisse

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BNP Paribas

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Deutsche Bank

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ING

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Apollo Global Management, Inc.

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Wells Fargo

Link

BNY Mellon

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Fidelity International

Link

Lazard

Link

Books I am reading