So What?

A new idea dinner series asking what happens next, congestion pricing is like an AI IDE, one cool job, and getting moldy!

We all see the same long term trends that will shape the next decades of markets, company building, and society. We can all basically agree that:

• AI will keep getting better

• We’re driving off a demographic cliff

• Software will eat the world

• We’re gonna need way more rare earth metals

• The space boom is real/inevitable

• Climate change is faster than adaptation

• Attention is the new economic substrate

There’s any number more of these propositions that are largely uncontroversial (or should be). But rather than debating them over and over and over again, we want to be asking “so what?” What happens next? What are the second order impacts? Third order? What do you do in response?

If we can agree on some basic direction it gives us an opportunity to ask and answer better questions, to extrapolate the future from the present, and to trace the potential ripples from the massive historical shifts/catalysts underway today.

Over the coming months, I’ll be hosting a series of So What Dinners in NYC to extrapolate out and figure out what happens next. Will Quist is doing the same in SF.

Each dinner will explore a single topic along infinite axes among a small, intellectually diverse group for a closed door session (sign up here). They will require some preparation/pre-work and earnest buy-in. Everyone will be expected to speak, share, and speculate.

You can read my own extrapolations on the second order impacts of improving AI here. And We’ll be sharing what the groups come up with as we go.

May you live in interesting times.

Get Involved

Right now we’ve got two dinners scheduled for next month. In each, we’ll work on a single long range theme and work through its implications, extrapolations, and ripple effects.

• August: AI will keep getting better

• August: Attention is the new economic substrate

For the “Attention” dinner I’m super excited that Kylan Scanlon, author of In This Economy and one of my favorite creators, is coming to NY to co-host with me. She is one of my favorite thinkers and will make this really special. Sign up/apply to join the series here. Space will be limited.

We'll pull the thread and extrapolate out the ripples of the attention economy across work, markets, life.

We’ll likely run the AI dinner again in September or October.

My AI Extrapolations

Here are the first order impacts I think we can all basically agree on.

• Lower cost, more digital stuff (approaching free/infinite): AI is clearly great at generating words, images, and code. It’ll get there on video and eventually games too. Cost of production down, supply up. Obviously.

• Everything will be “personalized,” localized, or contextualized: Custom software, instantaneous contextualization, personalized advertising, on-demand books, etc. This stuff will be relatively easy to produce (and maybe even produce well) and people will love it. The Ghiblis are a leading indicator of that.

• Lots of automation of white collar work. AI is great and will get better at DOING cubicle work/routine cognitive labor. And it’s decent and will get better at supporting higher level/value knowledge work in all kinds of contexts and modalities. Some jobs will go away entirely, many will become much more productive, all of them will change meaningfully.

• Lots of direct oversight of service/blue collar work. AI can’t DO this work but it will/can make observability and real time feedback newly possible. You can use AI to scale management in the field.

But so what? What happens next?

Read on for my 2nd and 3rd order takes. And I want to hear yours!

Work For Phoebe

My buddy Justin Woodbridge is hiring a founding engineer for Phoebe.work based in NYC. Phoebe is building AI teammates for home health. Great opportunity for a full stack engineer that wants to go early with a repeat founder with funding and momentum. Job description.

Abundance

Congestion pricing is growing like an AI coding assistant! And just like Cursor, it’s probably time to raise prices if there’s this much demand with current pricing. Via Gothamist

• $500M in revenue in 6 months

• Rush hour delays at Holland Tunnel down 65%

• Subway ridership up 7%

• Bus ridership up 12%

• LIRR ridership up 8%

• Metro-North ridership up 6%

• Access-A-Ride ridership up 21%

But, from Brad Hargreaves:

Congestion pricing opponents' one good point was that any revenue generated from CP would be immediately frittered away by NYS's penchant for institutional graft and public sector union capture. They were right; NYS is now rolling back one person train operations.

The NYS legislature just passed a bill requiring two train operators for each train. There is literally no good reason for this (the trains do not need two operators) and lots of bad ones (it drives up cost and will decrease service when there “aren’t enough” operators). This is a very real instance where we have to choose between efficient, fast transit and union jobs. If the subway is a maximally effective jobs program, it can’t also be a maximally effective transit system. The bill passed almost unanimously so you can bet that your State Senator voted for it.

Mold!

Mold is super hot right now. It’s like the protein of environmental contaminants. It’s in everything with no signs of going away. It’s literally in the air! There’s some potentially transitory reasons for this (MAHA mania) but there’s also some really good reasons:

1. Climate change is creating the perfect conditions for endemic mold infestations (heat, humidity, damp) at the same time as

2. We keep learning more about just how bad mold exposure is for you over time. Mold is exactly the kind of silent killer that stirs the imagination.

My request for mold-related startups went mini viral. Now I’m meeting a bunch of mold and environmental health companies over the next couple weeks and will be back when I’ve thought/read/learned more about this. There might be something here.