Another Podcast
Two friends and colleagues, Benedict Evans and Toni Cowan-Brown, have honest and unfiltered discussions about the latest in tech and its impact on society. They bring overlapping experiences and perspectives, with different backgrounds and expertise. The podcast is not over-scripted or edited, offering raw conversations about technology.
Episodes
Most people and companies aren't tool-builders
AI makes it easy for anyone to build tools to automate their work... except most people and most companies aren't tool-builders, don't think like that, and can't and won't do that. This is why software companies and consultants exist - AI changes the thresholds but not the problem.
Token pricing
AI is in a supply crunch today, but what happens when we come out of it? How and where will supply, demand, price, capacity and capex get back into equilibrium? Today, model labs can name their price, but why won’t they end up as low-margin commodity infrastructure?
The spring updates on AI
Twice a year, Benedict publishes a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry, and the latest came out a few weeks ago. These days, that means AI. What's new and what are the big questions?
What jobs are AI jobs?
How do you know what AI will do to your industry? Your company? Your job? The easy, obvious answer is to add up the things you do that can be automated, but it’s probably better to ask how the job will change, and to ask what your job really means. Is AI tackling the easy part or the hard part? What are your customers really buying?
The end of the network effect
OpenAI has some big questions. It doesn’t have unique tech. It has a big user base, but with limited engagement and stickiness and no network effect. The incumbents have matched the tech and are leveraging their product and distribution. And a lot of the value and leverage will come from new experiences that haven’t been invented yet, and it can’t invent all of those itself. What’s the plan?
AI and SaaS
What does AI do to software? What's a more interesting answer than 'no, this won't kill SaaS'? And what comes after the euphoria?
How does OpenAI compete?
OpenAI has all the mindshare and 800m weekly active users, but the models remain commodities and platforms with their own distribution are coming up fast. How will it compete? How will any of this work? How can you differentiate AI?
The AI presentation
It's time for Benedict's annual Tech Trends presentation. What's new, what's boring, what are the new questions?
A double episode: AI differentiation, and Apple does F1
How can billion dollar chatbots differentiate when they're all doing the same thing in the same way?- and -Why is tech into F1, and why is F1 into tech?
Looking for AI strategies
It's easy to say what tech companies want from AI, but much harder to talk about the product strategy - they're all pretty much the same. "Just build a better model!" Where does that go? Can they differentiate? What would it mean to differentiate a product that can do 'everything' - what would different everythings be?
Ai eats the world
For the past decade, Benedict has given an annual presentation on the state of technology, and he did the latest at Slush in Helsinki last month. In this episode we discuss some of the challenges and issues that he tried to cover. You can find the full presentation here - https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations
From SAAS software to Formula 1
Benedict went from being a consultant to an analyst to having his own business, but in essence, he's always been an analyst. Toni went from policy to consultancy, then from B2B sales to Formula 1. After four years of doing the podcast, we thought it would be interesting to sit down and discuss how we got here and talk all things Formula 1.
Google's Antitrust case
A quarter century after 'don't be evil', a judge has found that Google is abusing its monopoly in search. But no-one knows what happens next, and whether this ruling will change anything. Will Apple build a search engine? Will ChatGPT change search? Does it matter? There are many more questions than answers.
The AI summer
As we go into the summer, we know a lot more about generative AI than we did six or nine months ago - or at least, we have better questions.
Looking for AI use-cases
Generative AI is the thing, and all new software will be built around it. But while everyone is experimenting and some people are getting huge value out of ChatGPT or Midjourney right now, others haven't worked out how to make it useful. Yet. So how do we find use-cases for a universal, general purpose, magical technology, and is that a crazy question?
Tiktok, Apple and Temu
Will the US finally break up Tiktok? Will the EU break up the App Store? And why does Temu want to keep your orders under $800?
Google Gemini and AI bias
Are there questions that an AI chatbot shouldn't answer? Should it always give the 'right answer'? Are you sure? Google has egg on its face this week, but this isn't easy, and with generative AI, we're going to re-run all the arguments and panics we had over content moderation in the last decade.
Breaking and remaking media
We’re past peak TV, the charts are curving down, and Hollywood is pretty sure that streaming was a bad idea. On the other hand, music is growing strongly and might even end up bigger than CDs. Why have newspapers, books, movies, TV and music coped so differently with the internet?
Apple's Vision Pro
Yes, we bought one. What’s it like and what can we say that we didn’t say last summer? What has Apple built, what is it for, what does it mean for Meta, and why does it cost $3,500?
What's your AI strategy?
Everyone needs an AI strategy (there was an email from the CEO!) but what would that mean? How does a big company work out how to deploy a new technology? How is this the same as every other platform shift, and how might it be different?
AI and Everything Else
Every year, Benedict produces a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. Here are some of the key takeaways from this year's presentation - AI, and everything else.Presentation - https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations
LLMs, links, and the death of links
We spent the last 30 years building structures on top or instead of the raw links of the web, from Google to TikTok… but now LLMs might read all the links for us.
Bundling/Unbundling AI
ChatGPT and LLMs can do anything (or look like they can), so what can you do with them? How do you know? Do we move to chat bots as a magical general-purpose interface, or do we unbundle them back into single-purpose software?
The magic customer
A conversation with Leonard Brody, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Caravan. How do you build brands and consumer products in a world of infinite choice and infinite media? And how does celebrity fit into that? Caravan
Unbundling ChatGPT
Nine months on, everyone is still trying to understand where ChatGPT will go, but one big question for us: how is this useful, for us, today? What's the product? How does this get unbundled?
Threads
What is Threads? A Twitter that doesn't suck? Something else? Could it work?
Vision Pro, two weeks on
Two weeks after Apple showed us the Vision Pro - what have they built, what is it for, what does it mean for Meta, and why does it cost $3,500? Check back in 2025.Apple's product pages (watch some of this if you haven't already).
Apple Vision
Apple does VR. We watched. We took pictures. We talk about it.
Working out AI questions
We don't know what generative AI will be (or what will happen next week), but we're starting to work out what questions to ask
Buzzfeed News, Reddit and OpenAI
Buzzfeed News dies just as Reddit and Stack Overflow say they'll charge LLMs to train on their data. Who owns content and how does distribution work in an LLM age? Are those the right questions? What should we be asking?
Metaverse and crypto - beyond the BS
Crypto crashed, metaverse was silly, and now we know that generative AI is the future of everything. Right? Well, sort of. But though the hype has moved on, the reasons web3 and VR were interesting haven't really changed.
AI, copyright and collective knowledge
If you spend an hour typing prompts into MidJourney, who owns the result? There are easy answers to this, but they're probably wrong - these are new questions with new puzzles, much like radio, photography or music before.
GPT-4 is here, now what?
Generative machine learning is moving so fast it's impossible to keep up. What questions can we ask about GPT4, before everything changes again next week?
The right questions to ask about TikTok
The 'ban it' snowball is getting bigger and bigger, but what problem are we solving - privacy, or propaganda? How does this scale to all the other Chinese apps? And meanwhile, how well do we pay attention to the product itself?
Amazon's $40B advertising business
Amazon sold close to $40bn of advertising last year - bigger than Prime, bigger than the entire global newspaper industry and probably more profitable than AWS. But is this really advertising, rent, or something else? And what does that mean for Google?Blog post and charts
ChatGPT versus Google
Microsoft thinks (or says) that Generative ML will reset the search market, unlocking Google's market share and collapsing those 60% operating margins. Really? What would that mean?
Generative search
What would generative search mean? Generative video? Indeed, Generative products? Last week we talked about how ChatGPT, LLMs and generative ML work - now, what might they mean.
Generative AI
The wave of enthusiasm around ChatGPT and generative AI feels like another Imagenet moment - a step change in what ‘AI’ can do that could generalise far beyond the cool demos. But - it makes things up, and it doesn't actually understand anything it's doing. Probably. What does that mean? What's this for?
Why are chips interesting again?
Chips have always been the foundation of tech, but the rest of us didn't need to pay much attention - stuff just got faster every year. But now there are actual real, big, interesting structural changes happening - what does that look like?
No Soup for You! Regulating tech M&A
Within and Activision, but also PA Semi and Android - how do we think about big tech buying stuff, and why is it hard for regulators?
ChatGPT and the Imagenet Moment
When machine learning started really working, back in 2012-13-14, the demos were amazing, but it wasn't immediately obvious how universal the applications would be. The same with Generative AI now - now - the demos are cool, but what will they mean? How will this generalise to change search or law firms?
All the other things happening in tech part 1.
What does Anker have to do with Mr Beast, Amazon ads or Aesop? A chat about unbundling ecommerce and building brands in a world of infinite media.
The FTX face-palm
What can we say about a ‘crypto’ crash if we’re not crypto people, nor Wall Street people? How much does it matter?
How many metaverses?
Every now and then, big company CEOs all read the same tech trends piece and send the same email - "what's our strategy for this?!" And in 2022, there were a lot of "metaverse?!" emails. But what does 'metaverse' mean, can you have a strategy for it, and do you even need to care? Probably not.
Wondering about generative AI
Generative AI looks like second wave of ML hat might be as big a deal as the Imagenet wave from 2013 or so. What questions can we ask?
Figma, unbundling and $20bn of antitrust
What does Adobe's purchase of Figma tell us about the ways that software is changing, and the kinds of tools that people build and use? And, how long until the antitrust lawsuit arrives?
TV after software
‘Software eats the world’, and now it’s eating TV, but then what? Pretty soon software seems to stop mattering, and all the questions become TV questions, fashion questions, or music questions, while tech moves on to something else. Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
A new wave of company creation
Adam Neumann's latest venture shines a light on some of the interesting questions that arise, such as: What is this, what could it be, and can it work? Can this person make it work? As well as, is this the kind of deal we should be doing? Do we understand this?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Lighting and tech diffusion
What does a light on a restaurant table say about the failure of smart home startups? Or Shein?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
The FTC's antitrust thesis
The US is fundamentally rethinking its approach to competition, and M&A, and tech, and big tech buying startups. The FTC trying to block Meta from buying Within is the test case for all of those. How many interesting problems can we cover in 30 minutes?When big tech buys small techFollow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
When the point of leverage changes
What does 'focus' mean for a trillion dollar company? Amazon is buying doctors and Apple might be a bank - should we change our assumptions for what these kinds of companies would never do? How does the point of leverage change?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Remember AI?
Five years ago AI was everything, but attention moved on (Metaverse! Crypto!) and ‘Applied AI’ became useful but boring. Now things like DALL-E look cool, but what are they useful for? What’s the second wave?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
What's next for advertising?
Advertising is $700bn - after IDFA and the cookie apocalypse, what else is breaking apart and where do things land?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Three ways to say no
The more that governments, regulators, policy-makers and activists demand that tech works differently, the more argument there is, and the more that tech people and companies people say ‘no!’ But what does it mean when a tech company, or indeed any company in any industry, says ’no’? Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Shein, TikTok and Netflix - thinking about limits
Shein added 60k new products in the last week - double Zara and H&M's total combined stock. Netflix made more shows last year than the entire US TV industry back when it start streaming. What happens when you remove physical limits? What's the feedback cycle? Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Metaverse - how to be wrong in the right way
What do we mean when we say 'the metaverse'? And what do we mean by interoperability?It's far more useful to get specific about how we think about the future of the internet. What will it do and not do? How will it work and not work? If we are going to make predictions and be wrong, we might as well be wrong in specific ways.Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Stories in the noise
Elon made a lot of noise this week, but what else was going on? We chat about half a dozen things that happened in tech this week, all of them more interesting than the bird company. Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Netflix isn't a tech company
Netflix missed its numbers, but what's really going on in streaming? Is this a tech company, and does it have winner-takes-all effects? Or are all the questions to ask really about television? And whatever happened to the Apple TV?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
The future of Twitter
Elon is on manoeuvres, but what are the problems? Has he thought about this at all? Why has Twitter always been such a mess, and why is it such a tiny company?
Are you a seal?
‘Big tech’ is big and scary, but do they care about your market? They could come in, yes, and make a mess, but would that make any sense for them? And, do you look like a seal?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
The Evolution of networks
Web3 will remake networks, content and online publishing - apparently. But how many cycles have we been through, how much do the forms, networks and intersections change, and what does it mean to own your data? Is that even possible? Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Ukraine
A chat about Ukraine without pretending we know about Russia, geopolitics and Ukraine. Rather we will focus on some of the things happening in and around tech with regards to this. And we are absolutely conscious these may not be the most important things happening right now.Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Talking about crypto
Crypto is so big and yet so unclear that we can’t even agree what to call it. What does ‘web3’ mean, what might it mean, how do we ignore the noise, and what questions might matter?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
The retail reset
Everything comes out of Covid (we hope), especially retail. US ecommerce penetration jumped forward a little and the UK a lot, but what kinds of companies, brands and stories can be created now that everything and anything can be online?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Asking the dumb questions
One thing is obvious in tech, there are so many questions worth exploring. In 2022, we are thinking about cars and infrastructure, crypto and web3, AR and VR, games and regulations. It's less about hat we focus on maybe, and more about how we think about these topics and what questions are worth paying attention to.
What we know about web 3 so far
Another episode on our theme ‘how to talk about X if you’re not in the field’ - this time ‘Web3’, the new brand name for crypto. How do we ignore the noise (SO much noise) and think about where and how this will be useful?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
How to think about tech
We can talk all day about crypto, or VR or Facebook, but how might we talk about *everything* in tech? What are the frameworks and tools to structure the noise?
The Meta reality
There are two strands to this story: the second phase of Facebook which is the Metaverse (which we previously spoke about on the podcast) and Facebook actually changing its name to Meta. If and when you decide to create a new brand because the existing brand comes with a lot of baggage, a marketing person would probably suggest you fix the problems first, and then decide how to communicate the reb
Metaverse - beyond the buzzword
‘Metaverse’ is the buzzword of the moment, yet it doesn’t really exist as more than a label on a whiteboard, and many of the ideas it tries to combine might not happen, or not like that. This might be the new ‘information highway.’ But however it works, some kind of break-out of new devices, new experiences and new kinds of popular culture seems pretty easy to believe in.Follow Benedict on Twitter
Regulation - Who will notice?
Tech regulation and the problems that prompt it to fill every headline. But is structural change coming? Who will this affect? Who will notice?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Apple's metronome
The new iPhones are boring, and why that's interesting. Plus, Apple and Epic stumble towards a new App Store model, and - Real Soon Now - Apple! glasses! and! cars! It's the Apple metronome. Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Games and Roblox
The barrier to entry to gaming is lower than it has ever been. But are there more gamers today? Are more 10-year-olds playing games today than they did 10 years ago? And why are we more focused on what is happening in this space?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Telcos and Tesla
Why hasn't tech disrupted mobile network operators? Smartphones changed everything about mobile, and yet the networks are all still there with pretty much the same business. Does software always matter? At what level of the stack? And what's the read-across to cars?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Creativity and Optimism
A conversation about creativity, working with tech and optimism with Nicolas Roope, agency and startup co-founder who has ridden many of the revolutions we talk about on this show.Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on TwitterFollow Nicolas on Twitter
'Digital transformation' - beyond the silly slogan
'Digital transformation' sounds like a terrible marketing slogan, but it describes a pretty basic generational change in how big companies do tech. Why is that interesting if you're not a big company? Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Tech in china, from inside and outside
This is a follow-up to our conversation on Chinese tech with someone who knows a lot more about this space than we do - Lillian Li, who writes the weekly newsletter, Chinese Characteristics.Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on TwitterFollow Lillian on Twitter
The Business of publishing
This is a follow-up to our conversation on Ad Tech with someone who knows a little more about this space than we do - Jeremy White, Executive Editor WIRED UK.Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on TwitterFollow Jeremy White on Twitter
Paying attention to Apple again
Why do we watch WWDC? Did Apple do anything that matters if you don't own an iPhone? And what's the war on privacy?Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
Trying to understand Ad Tech
Online advertising is worth $300bn, and yet almost no-one that doesn't work on an ad team really understands much of it. So what is the cookie apocalypse, what does it mean, and where is the money and power moving? No, we don't know either. Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
App stores: arguing like it's 2009
Benedict and Toni discuss the ongoing debates surrounding app stores, but specifically Apple's app store.Follow Benedict on TwitterFollow Toni on Twitter
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