Better to Be Established

Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discuss the rapidly evolving AI landscape and how it's reshaping business opportunities and competition. While Sam feels overwhelmed by the pace of change and grateful he's not starting out now, Shaan offers a contrasting perspective on why this is actually the best time to be building.

Key Points:

• The Pace of AI Innovation is Overwhelming:

  • There's "so much information and so much stuff happening it's so fast"
  • Sam is "very thankful I'm not 22 right now" because he's already established
  • The competition is "way harder" than before

• Shaan's Counter-Perspective - The Musical Chairs Analogy:

  • If you add 5 new players to musical chairs, it gets harder
  • But if you "50x the number of chairs and you add 50 people it doesn't matter"
  • "There's still so many chairs to go sit in"
  • AI has made "every single product in every single category + a whole slew of new categories just came up for grabs"
  • The opportunity set is "so much bigger that yeah there's more competition but it doesn't matter"
  • You'd "rather have this huge multiplier on the number of possible ways to win and how easy it is to build than less people"

• Every Company Needs AI Talent:

  • "Every company just needs one of these AI guys"
  • Actually, "you need many of them in the company"
  • "As many as you can have"

• Real-World Impact Examples:

  • A billion-dollar company doubled their profit margin with just three AI changes:
    • Improving customer support with AI
    • Making developers more productive
    • Getting rid of junior programmers who weren't good at using AI
  • One guy built an entire command center for the business in "like three months"

• The Right Mental Framework for Adoption:

  • Don't try to become top 1-10% in AI - that's the wrong game
  • The winning strategy: "I already know a lot of stuff, imagine if I just got just good enough, just dangerous enough where it multiplies against what I've already got"
  • If you're already top 10% in business/content and get to 50th percentile in AI, "it multiplies against all your other skills"
  • Don't compare yourself to "people who are technically brilliant or just on this 24/7 or they're 22 years old and their brain still is super plastic"
  • Focus on being "just dangerous enough" with AI to leverage your existing domain expertise