21 Comments

Interesting perspective on S-curves within a backdrop of exponential growth.

I think your analysis on trend extrapolation was great. Reminded me of one of the concepts explored in "Factfulness".

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Aug 2, 2021Liked by Packy McCormick

interesting..thanks for sharing!

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Great set of thoughts. Should definitely consider a part 2 on how to play this. It’s becoming more crticial to visualize the future yet vastly more difficult to do so.

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The chip biz has lived this since it's inception. Been in the chip biz since '76, done many generations of product planning. "Why" and "Who needs that" are always questions. but over time, the right answer was 'you don't have to be smart to do product planning in the semiconductor biz, you just need semi-log paper".

How quaint.. who knows what semi-log paper is anymore ;-)

One CTO I worked w/ had a great phrase. You don't shoot ahead of the duck. You shoot ahead of next year's duck. That CTO is still at it, driving one of the industry's leaders.

Loved the article, exponential growth impacts not just one industry....

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Great read, especially in 2022. It'd be awesome to see a reflection on this piece given all the upheaval and change we've seen this year.

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Unfortunately, the same expo acceleration seems to be happening to the climate as well.

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Great article! One caveat I wonder about though, for all of recent human history population growth has been exponential but that seems to have stopped and we will see peak population and decline (already starting to see in the west caveat immigration). How much growth has been driven by population growth till now? TAM has been increasing but perhaps no longer.

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What happened to ur article abt the cosmos ecosystem?

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I’m surprised how you just brushed over the threat of climate change - closing your eyes and trusting that tech will take care of the problem may not work for the climate crisis in the way it has for other issues. I suggest reading “The Uninhabitable Earth.”

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Hmm, my $0.02

1) Exponential growth: its always fascinating to see a parabola, but ultimately exp is roughly doubling, meaning at any point in the graph the users sees a steep line ahead

2) Valuation: I guess in light of the curve-discussion, the question is also: how much forward-looking exponent is already priced in. Obviously, long-term everything that is not bankrupt grows (thanks to devaluation), but mid-term is more tricky. After the spring and summer comes the winter. Living through decade of sideways movement is deranging to most investors

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Don’t flame me but — curious to know where the value is at Uber? Even darling Amazon has extremely shady accounting practices that allow it to subsidize it’s insane revenue growth… what if part of this insanity is that it is actually insanity like the south sea bubble?

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i like the 100 to 10 x 10 picture... this is decentralization. the benefits can be just as good if not better. compounding makes this possible.

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