“I’m not dead.”
Plague victim, Monty Python and the Holy Grail
I posted last week that I was done investing in new companies. I appreciate all of you who reached out or said nice things on the twitter. In addition to the encouragement, there were a few elegies, so this post is to reiterate that even though I am no longer investing, I am still writing.
That said, after I published that post, I immediately lost about 3% of my email subscribers. Some of you are here to read the writing and some of you are here because I used to hand out cash to strangers. If the writing’s not for you, then at the bottom of the email there is a link to ‘manage’ your subscription; from there you can remove yourself from getting future posts as emails. Feel free, I won’t be insulted. I don’t really like my writing either.
If you’re here for the writing, here’s what’s on the list.
1. Uncertainty
Not a surprise, I am going to keep trying to chip away at my long-term obsession. My main interest here is figuring out the best way to deal with uncertainty in innovation projects, especially startups. I’ve written many posts about this already, as you know. Posts I have cued up (though given my writing speed, this is no guarantee they are imminent):
- Managing uncertainty through trial and error (I wrote a post about trial and error, but it sucks and I need to go back and start again);
- Managing uncertainty through managing the system that creates the uncertainty (in a startup context this would mean managing the process of social change/market creation);
- Exploring the connection between uncertainty and power laws;
- How some popular theories of innovation dynamics make more sense if reoriented around uncertainty.
I hope for this to culminate in a book about strategy under uncertainty that I would try to convince some university press to publish.
2. What’s Next
I am skeptical of futurism per se. The best I think you can do without just outright guessing is to think about how systems of innovation work. I’ve written about Carlota Perez’ theory as a framework for this and plan to write more. What I have teed up:
- Is innovation speeding up, or is this just the phase of the cycle we are in?;
- The end of the deployment phase (ie. now), what it looks likes, and what it means for the next ten years;
- The attributes of technologies that start new technology waves; and related,
- Candidate technologies and what would need to happen for them to seed the next technological revolution.
3. AI and Epistemology
I said in that last post that I wasn’t excited about the startups I’m seeing because I didn’t feel like they were breaking new technological ground. I got a bunch of feedback along the lines of “but what about AI?” I’ve invested in AI companies. I’ve even made money on investments in AI companies. But the current crop of AI companies doesn’t fit my model of “what’s next”: the technology is dominated by large companies or “startups” seed-funded at billion dollar valuations. This makes it more likely that AI is the trailing edge of the previous paradigm, not the leading edge of a new one.
That said, I’m excited by the technology. I don’t think it’s AGI or can be incrementally improved to become AGI, but it’s fascinating. Part of my fascination is just a general interest in what thinking is and how we do it. I don’t have a writing agenda here, but it’s something I’d like to spend more time on.
4. Entrepreneurship Education
I still plan to teach entrepreneurship. Part of doing things—any things—for me, is frustration at how badly they are generally done. I don’t like how entrepreneurship is taught at the university level: it’s either too tools-and-processes oriented or it’s too divorced from the reality of how fast growth companies are built. Part of this is syllabus and part of it is the materials available to teach with. I’ll be working on both.
- A book on unit economics. This is half-finished. I plan to publish some of it here to test it out and then see if I can get other teachers of entrepreneurship to give me feedback before publishing it open source. (If you are a teacher of entrepreneurship, get in touch with me, I am making a list. You could tweet or DM me on twitter or bluesky, @ganeumann);
- I am thinking about a general entrepreneurship textbook (that I also figure I would publish open source.)
This isn’t exciting stuff, but it probably make a bigger near-term impact than the other stuff. I also feel like I have something unique-ish to offer here, having taught, read the research, been an entrepreneur, and worked with other entrepreneurs for decades.
The one thing I have written about that I don’t plan to write about for a while is venture investing per se. I just need a break from thinking about it. If you need venture investing content, go buy my book. It’s fun, you’ll like it.
Of course, one of the benefits of not being beholden to anyone is that I can write whatever I want. But these are the things I’m thinking about now. If this isn’t for you, it’s ok if you unsubscribe. I won’t mind. Go ahead, do it! Otherwise, I have a post pretty close to done (“Innovation is not speeding up”), maybe next week.
If you’re reading this, are not a subscriber, and some of this is interesting to you, subscribe here!