Supply and Algorithms Enable Personalization

Shaan Puri believes we're entering an era of "mass personalization" where AI enables software and content to be hyper-customized to individual needs, similar to how news feeds revolutionized content consumption over the past 15-20 years.

The Mass Personalization Revolution:

• The News Feed Precedent:

  • 20 years ago, content had mass appeal (newspapers for everyone, TV shows with 55 million viewers)
  • Algorithms like TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook changed this to "a hell of a lot just for you"
  • People voted with their eyes—they don't want mass content, they want hyper-relevant content
  • His wife wants oddly satisfying crochet videos; he wants NBA highlights—totally different feeds

• Why It Became Possible:

  • Supply increased 10 million times as everyone became a creator (bloggers → tweets → images → videos)
  • Algorithms could automatically curate based on individual signals without human editors

Personal Software is Next:

• Beyond Content to Software:

  • All software currently gets built centrally to appeal "a little bit to everybody"
  • Now you can make highly personalized software—not just for "Sam who likes business biographies" but "Sam who likes business biographies and is going through these challenges in life right now"
  • This is the future: software tailored to your exact needs and current situation

• Vibe Coding for Everything:

  • "Vibe coding" = roughly describing what you want, getting something back, iterating ("yeah but actually I wanted this")
  • Like ordering at a table where the chef keeps making dishes until you get what you want
  • This approach is expanding beyond code to music, content creation, and other skills

New Ways of Working:

• Voice-First Creation:

  • Walk the dog with an AirPod, ramble for 30 minutes about ideas
  • Feed it to ChatGPT to remove rambly parts and structure it into a book chapter
  • Get something 85-90% there without looking at a screen
  • His dad wouldn't even recognize this as "work"

• AI as Background Workers:

  • Created a content strategy in 19 minutes before recording
  • AI analyzed their channel, suggested titles, created a one-month content plan
  • Offered to script videos, design thumbnails—constantly working in the background
  • The idea of having workers "constantly working for you" that keep getting better

The Divide:

• Winners vs. Losers:
  • Winners will use AI to 10x or 100x their output
  • Losers will say "this is too new, this is too fast, we should keep it old school"
  • The difference is simply willingness to adopt these tools