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Oproep aan Apple CEO Tim Cook om op te stappen

Apple ligt onder vuur met een felheid die het deze eeuw nog niet heeft beleefd. Het begon eerder deze maand met een scherpe analyse van John Gruber getiteld ‘Er is iets verrots in de staat Cupertino‘, verwijzend naar het hoofdkantoor van Apple. Gruber sloeg zich publiekelijk voor de kop dat hij niet had zien aankomen dat Apple de invoering van “gepersonaliseerde Siri”, ofwel een diepe integratie van AI-toepassingen met alles wat een iPhone en een Mac kunnen doen, met minimaal een jaar uitstelt.

Het bleek de aftrap van een waar spervuur aan kritiek, vooral gericht aan het adres van Apple CEO Tim Cook. Zelfs van zeer gerenommeerde analisten zoals voormalig journalist, nu venture capitalist, Stewart Alsop; en van MG Siegler, ook een voormalig journalist die vc werd maar gelukkig weer is gaan schrijven.

Tel daarbij op dat de zeer invloedrijke YouTuber Marques Brownlee, die bij Apple de rode loper krijgt uitgerold voor 1 op 1 interviews met Tim Cook, ook flink los ging en de conclusie is gerechtvaardigd dat Cook zich kan opmaken voor een gevecht om zijn baan. De financiële analisten volgen immers doorgaans de beter geïnformeerde tech-journalisten en die halen hun nieuws en inzichten op hun beurt vaak bij bloggers.

Tim Cook worstelt met het integreren van AI in Apple producten, maar moet je daarom met pensioen?
Beeld gemaakt met Midjourney

Apple heeft drie problemen

In de kern draait de kritiek om drie fundamentele kwesties: ten eerste het ontbreken van een duidelijke AI-strategie, waardoor Apple achterblijft met kunstmatige intelligentie in zijn productlijn; ten tweede het uitblijven van succesvolle nieuwe producten sinds introductie van de Apple Watch precies een decennium geleden; en ten derde de groeiende zorgen over de dienstenafdeling, zoals Apple TV Plus, dat jaarlijks een miljard dollar verlies lijdt in plaats van pakweg vijf miljard winst zoals Netflix. Uitgerekend het bedrijf dat Apple een paar geleden weigerde te kopen, omdat services-baas Eddie Cue niet geloofde in het Neflix-model van geld lenen om content en marktaandeel te kopen. Oeps.

“Beste Tim Cook, is het tijd om met pensioen te gaan?”

Stewart Alsop weet als voormalig journalist dat een lekker stuk vraagt om een vlotte openingszin, die dan ook luidt: ‘Meneer Cook, ik denk dat u een plan in werking moet stellen om een opvolger te zoeken.’ Alsop lijkt bijna persoonlijk beledigd dat Apple de grootse aankondigingen van Apple Intelligence niet waar kan maken en rept zelfs over ‘vaporware’, de grootst mogelijke belediging aan het adres van een technologiebedrijf.

Zijn teleurstelling over het niet nakomen van een door Apple gedane belofte lijkt gemeend: “Apple liet zien dat het wist hoe het mijn persoonlijke gegevens, zowel opgeslagen op het apparaat als in iCloud, kon gebruiken om mijn leven een stuk makkelijker te maken. Ik kon niet wachten om te vragen: “Siri, wanneer komt mijn dochter aan op het vliegveld?” of “Siri, wie was die man met wie ik twee weken geleden koffie dronk?” (…) Alles wat ik ooit heb gewild sinds de iPhone bestaat, is dat mijn telefoon weet wat het met mijn gegevens moet doen.”

Er is weinig in te brengen tegen Alsops analyse, die even kruidig afsluit als hij begon met zijn oproep aan Tim Cook om met pensioen te gaan:

“U lijkt een stap terug te doen in plaats van vooruit. Het is tijd om het roer over te dragen aan een kapitein die dit volgende technologische tijdperk aankan. Ik denk niet dat die persoon zich bevindt binnen het huidige team van zorgvuldig samengestelde topmensen, precies omdat u dat team hebt gebouwd om het maximale uit de vorige technologische revolutie te halen. Misschien is het tijd om de raad van bestuur te vragen om uw opvolger te benoemen, zoals Microsoft deed toen Satya Nadella werd aangesteld.”

Het verwijt dat Apple vorig jaar loze beloftes heeft gedaan is dermate elementair, dat Alsop bewust Microsoft als voorbeeld stelt aan een Apple CEO: pijnlijker kan niet.

AI-problemen en juridisch gedoe

Marques Brownlee uitte gisteren in een video zijn zorgen over Apple met een minstens even fruitige openingszin als Alsop: “Groot bedrijf mist enorme technologische omslag, past zich niet aan, raakt achterop, herstelt zich nooit en sterft.” Een tekst die nog geen jaar geleden onvoorstelbaar was als het over Apple ging.

Brownlee geeft feature voor feature aan hoe beperkt de AI-kwaliteiten zijn van Apple’s nieuwste software. Zijn betoog sluit aan bij een recente rechtszaak waarin Apple wordt beschuldigd van valse reclame rond toekomstige Siri-upgrades die nooit zijn verschenen. Volgens de aanklacht “hallucineerde” Apple nieuwe functies in de reclames en promopraatjes, waardoor mensen producten kochten waarvan Apple allang wist dat ze niet aan de geschapen verwachtingen konden voldoen. Een door Apple teruggetrokken commercial die Brownlee toont is zelfs schrijnend om te zien.

Toch is Brownlee minder uitgesproken dan Alsop. Hij wijst erop dat nog niet duidelijk is of AI daadwerkelijk zo fundamenteel is, dat falen op dat gebied de gehele toekomst van Apple aan het wankelen zou brengen.

Apple in diensten matig tot slecht

De derde analist die zich deze week roerde over Apple was MG Siegler, ooit bij Techcrunch berucht vanwege zijn scherpe pen. Siegler richtte zich specifiek op Apple’s streamingambities, die naar verluidt een verlies van een miljard dollar op Apple TV Plus opleverden in het afgelopen jaar.

Ondanks forse investeringen in originele content en samenwerkingen met de grootste filmsterren, slaagt Apple er niet in om te concurreren met giganten als Netflix en Disney. Er heerst nu ook verwarring rond Apple’s podcaststrategie, omdat Apple TV Plus Podcasts (wat een naam) wordt uitgerold naast het bestaande Apple Podcasts-platform.

Siegler betwijfelt ook of de beschikbaarheid van Apple TV+ op niet-Apple apparaten wel heeft bijgedragen aan Apple’s hardwareverkoop en wijst op Apple’s distributieproblemen van speelfilms, zoals rond de film “Wolfs” met George Clooney en Brad Pitt. Filmmarketing blijkt een totaal ander vak dan pakweg computer- en telefoon-marketing, waardoor de bekende kloof tussen Silicon Valley en Hollywood opnieuw zichtbaar werd.

Op televisiegebied ziet Siegler dat Apple TV+ wel successen heeft geboekt met series als “Ted Lasso” en “Severance.” Hij eindigt, en dat is iets wat leuker is aan zelfstandige analisten dan traditionele journalisten, zelfs met aanbevelingen aan Apple:

  1. Maak enkele grote films per jaar, maar kies zorgvuldig en zet zwaar in op Hollywood-marketing. De Formule 1-film met Brad Pitt deze zomer wordt de vuurdoop.
  2. Andere films krijgen strategische, beperkte releases, bijvoorbeeld in awardseizoenen, om buzz op te bouwen voor streaming.
  3. Behoud de hoge kwaliteit van tv-content. Breng de uitgaven in lijn met de industrie, zodat Apple geen toevluchtsoord wordt voor middelmatige projecten van grote namen.
  4. Maak de content beschikbaar op meer apparaten: consumenten kopen geen aparte doos van $130 (de Apple TV), zelfs als die goed is.
  5. Bied de mogelijkheid om Apple TV+-abonnees op andere platformen (zoals Amazon Prime Channels of Android) later over te zetten naar Apple One zodra ze een Apple-apparaat gebruiken, zels als dat geen garantie is voor hardwareverkoop.
Wie alleen de dagkoersen volgt, zal verbaasd zijn dat Tesla en Apple de best presterende Big Tech-aandelen waren van de laatste twaalf maanden.

De cijfers van Apple onder Cook

Alles aan Apple wordt in twijfel getrokken, waarbij te gemakkelijk over het hoofd wordt gezien dat de integratie op hardware-gebied fenomenaal is geweest. Onder Cook heeft Apple een verticale integratie doorgemaakt zoals zelden of nooit vertoond, waardoor het zowel in de Macs als in de iPhones chips gebruikt die het zelf ontwerpt, in tegenstelling tot vrijwel de gehele computerindustrie en telefoonsector.

Je hoeft alleen maar te kijken naar de droevige prestaties van Intel, tot voor kort de leverancier van Apple’s chips, zowel op technologisch gebied als qua aandeel. Apple’s netto winstmarges zijn sinds 2020 gestegen van 21% richting 25%.

Dan het aandeel: stel, je had op de dag dat Tim Cook aantrad als CEO van Apple, op 24 augustus 2011, voor duizend dollar aandelen Apple gekocht, dan zouden die vandaag bijna negentienduizend dollar waard zijn, wat neerkomt op een indrukwekkend rendement van ongeveer 1800%. Dat komt door een combinatie van de sterke koersstijging van het Apple-aandeel in deze periode en het effect van aandelensplitsingen in 2014 en 2020, mits je consequent het dividend had geherinvesteerd in Apple-aandelen.

Hoewel deze analyse ervan uitgaat dat herinvestering onmiddellijk plaatsvond tegen de slotkoers op de dividenddatum, wijst de algemene trend duidelijk op een zeer succesvolle belegging over de ‘regeerperiode’ van Cook.

Onder Jobs dezelfde problemen

In de kern kunnen worden de problemen bij Apple kort worden samengevat: het bedrijf is fantastisch in hardware en in besturingssystemen, maar het is slecht in het ontwikkelen en exploiteren van diensten op deze hardware. Dit is geen recent probleem van Apple, sterker nog: de beroemdste uitbarsting die Steve Jobs deze eeuw had, ging over de mislukte introductie in 2008 van MobileMe, de gewraakte voorloper van iCloud.

Voor wie het verhaal niet kent, Jobs vroeg het team: “Kan iemand mij vertellen wat MobileMe zou moeten doen?” Toen een paar mensen begonnen aan een antwoord, snauwde Jobs: “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?” En ontsloeg de leider van het team. Zijn opvolger werd… Eddy Cue, de man die 17 jaar later grote problemen heeft om de streamingdiensten van Apple winstgevend te krijgen.

Ook Google in existentiële nood

Apple is niet de enige techgigant die momenteel in het verdomhoekje zit. In “De middelmatigheid van het moderne Google” beschrijft Om Malik dit weekend hoe Google is afgegleden van innovatief leider naar een bedrijf gekenmerkt door middelmatigheid en interne verlamming.

Malik wijst erop dat Google’s kernproducten, zoals Search, steeds meer worden overspoeld met AI-gegenereerde content en advertenties, wat de gebruikerservaring schaadt. Google’s AI-initiatieven zoals Gemini 2.5 en AI Studio vallen volgens hem in het niet bij de innovaties van OpenAI en Anthropic, vooral qua gebruikersvriendelijkheid.

Hij citeert een paper uit 1998 van Google’s oprichters Larry Page en Sergey Brin, waarin al wordt gewaarschuwd voor de nadelen van een reclamegedreven model. Google is inmiddels vervallen in precies die valkuilen, waarbij adverteerders belangrijker lijken dan gebruikers.

Aardig is dat Malik verwijst naar een stuk dat hij al schreef in 2011 over Google, getiteld “Kan Google zichzelf redden van Google?”. Hierin zette Malik drie groeifases van techbedrijven uiteen. In fase één richt een bedrijf zich op het ontwikkelen van technologie en het vinden van een verdienmodel.

De volgende fase draait om het opschroeven van de inkomstenmachine. Daarbij volgt vaak een grote wervingsgolf van personeel om de groei te ondersteunen. In fase drie gaan bedrijven op zoek naar nieuwe groeigebieden. Ze worden groter en logger.

“Technologische zelfveroudering”

Volgens Malik bevindt Google zich nu diep in fase drie, waar interne politiek en procesmanagement de overhand hebben gekregen ten koste van productinnovatie. Het bedrijf is naar binnen gericht en focust veel op zijn eigen bureaucratie, meer dan op het verleggen van technologische grenzen.

Malik wijst erop dat “technologische zelfveroudering” een effectievere functie vervult dan welke overheidsinstantie dan ook: “Google, ondanks zijn marktwaarde van een biljoen dollar en infrastructuurvoordelen, loopt het risico om als eerste megacap irrelevant te worden nu het internet zich verder ontwikkelt voorbij het “tien blauwe links”-paradigma dat het ooit groot maakte.”

“Altcoins zijn een stoelendans”

In aflevering 9 van de NFA Podcast begint Nish met ondergetekende “TradFi Chad Guy” te noemen, waarna we de laatste headlines in crypto en tech bespreken.

* Op Youtube

* Op Spotify

* Op Apple Podcasts

* Op Substack

We bespreken de marktinzichten van Meltem Demirors, die de altcoinmarkt omschrijft als een “spelletje stoelendans”: het marktvolume en de totale marktwaarde zijn terug op het niveau van eind 2020. Daarna volgt een analyse door Nish van het Hyperliquid-drama, waar marktmanipulatie rond de Jelly-token bijna tot een verlies van $240 miljoen leidde. Ze legt uit hoe het ontbreken van KYC in DeFi zowel risico’s als vrijheid met zich meebrengt.

In TradFi-ontmoet-crypto nieuws daalde GameStop’s aandeel met 8% na de aankondiging van een Bitcoin-koop van $1,3 miljard via aandelenuitgifte, waarop niemand zat te wachten. Ook worden momenten van eerdere conferenties besproken, zoals Murad’s meme coin-praatje op Token2049, en ontmoetingen met crypto-denkers als Meltem Demirors.

Nish bespreekt verder World Mobile, een gedecentraliseerde telco met tokenized eigenaarschap van zendmasten en datanetwerken in achtergestelde gebieden.

Aan de techkant ga ik in op Apple’s problemen. Het is m.i. te vroeg om Cook af te rekenen op een strategische fout op het gebied van AI-beleid, gezien zijn uitmuntende prestaties sinds hij CEO werd in 2011.

Drie redenen waarom Cook niet weg moet

De door mij eerder aangehaalde analisten, waarvan ik groot fan ben, vergeten te vermelden dat het nog totaal onbewezen is dat AI in de vorm van LLM’s, waarin op dit moment honderden miljarden per jaar wordt geïnvesteerd, de juiste strategie is. Drie overwegingen:

  1. AI via LLM’s heeft een extreem hoge kostenstructuur: De ontwikkeling en inzet van geavanceerde AI-modellen vereist enorme rekenkracht, vaak op basis van gespecialiseerde GPU-infrastructuur. De operationele kosten voor het trainen, hosten en schalen van deze modellen bedragen jaarlijks miljarden dollars.
  2. Onzeker en gefragmenteerd verdienmodel: Er is momenteel geen duidelijk bewezen businessmodel dat op grote schaal rendabel is voor AI-bedrijven. De inkomsten komen voornamelijk uit API-verkoop, premium abonnementen of zakelijke licenties, maar het is nog onduidelijk of deze inkomsten in de toekomst structureel opwegen tegen de uitgaven. Veel van de technologie wordt bovendien snel gemeengoed, niemand heeft een onoverbrugbaar voordeel, waardoor marges onder druk komen te staan. Denk aan de opkomst van DeepSeek, dat tegen de prijs van een Fiat de prestaties levert van een Ferrari. Dat is vervelend als je tientallen miljarden in iets hebt gestopt, waarvan je nog maar moet hopen dat het een Ferrari blijkt.
  3. Zware afhankelijkheid van externe financiering en partnerships: Zowel OpenAI (met Microsoft) als Anthropic (met Amazon en Google) draaien nog grotendeels op externe investeringen en strategische deals. Deze investeringen zijn vaak niet gebaseerd op huidige winstgevendheid, maar op speculatie over toekomstige dominantie. Zolang er geen duidelijk pad is naar operationele winst, blijft deze strategie erg onzeker.

Daar komt nog bij dat ook andere big tech-bedrijven zoals Microsoft, Meta, Amazon en Oracle tientallen miljarden dollars investeren in AI zonder enig uitzicht op winst uit die initiatieven. Hun aandelen worden ook zwaarder gestraft dan Apple, toch niet onbelangrijk. Want met die aandelen kan Apple straks de mogelijk benodigde overnames betalen op AI-gebied, nog los van de door de hoge winstmarges rijkelijk gevulde oorlogskas.

Wat Cook valt aan te rekenen, is vooral die gladde PR-prietpraat van vorig jaar dat Apple met Apple Intelligence het wel even allemaal zou laten zien. Maar de kans is groot dat juist niks doen en afwachten welke voor Apple noodzakelijke speler er straks voor weinig op de kop kan worden getikt, de beste strategie is. Soms kun je beter op je handen zitten, dan op de blaren.

Categories
invest technology

Silicon Valley divided over choice between founders or managers

Because I was traveling this weekend, I don't have a good overview of the most important tech news. Therefore, I devote this newsletter to the only topic of conversation last week in tech circles: founders or managers - who are better?

The Uber driver's gold-rimmed sunglasses are a symbol of where I am this week. The answer is in the last photo, at the bottom.

In Silicon Valley last week most conversations were dominated by the discussions about "Founder Mode", following a blog post by Paul Graham, founder of the world's most successful startup incubator Y Combinator. Graham argues that startup founders shouldn't listen to investors who often insist on appointing experienced CEOs and managers, which Graham says often has disastrous consequences.

Founders or managers?

Operating in "founder mode," according to Graham, means adhering to a founder's mindset and management style. It's about bypassing rigid organizational structures and fostering close collaboration between departments. In contrast, startups in "manager mode" attract competent, experienced managers to lead teams with minimal interference from the CEO.

"The way managers are taught to run companies seems to be like modular design in the sense that you treat subtrees of the org chart as black boxes. You tell your direct reports what to do, and it's up to them to figure out how. But you don't get involved in the details of what they do. That would be micromanaging them, which is bad.
" Graham wrote.

Airbnb almost successfully managed into the ground

He was inspired to write his blog post by a recent speech by Airbnb co-founder Brian Chesky at Y Combinator. In it, Chesky highlighted the pitfalls of conventional wisdom when scaling businesses, often advising to hire good people and give them autonomy. When he followed this advice at Airbnb, it led to disappointing results.

In his own words, inspired by Steve Jobs, Chesky developed a new approach, which now seems to be working, given Airbnb's strong financial performance - although residents of the inner cities of Barcelona and Amsterdam will think otherwise, awash in a wave of rolling suitcases and higher rents due to Airbn's "success".

Many founders in the audience shared similar experiences as Chesky and realized that the usual advice harmed rather than helped them. Chesky pointed out that founders are also often advised to run their companies as professional managers upon strong growth, which often proves ineffective.

Apple and Microsoft successful in manager mode

According to Chesky and Paul Graham, founders possess unique skills that managers without entrepreneurial backgrounds often lack. By suppressing these instincts, founders can actually harm their companies.

Risa Mish, management professor at Cornell University, contrasted that in Observer that it was precisely Steve Jobs who was succeeded with great success by the experienced manager Tim Cook. Microsoft has also performed many times better under Satya Nadella than anyone ever expected.

"But it could be as simple as the difference between a team trying to create new things and a company focused on growing existing products and revenue streams," Mish said.

Examples abound in both camps

Mish has apparently forgotten that Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in the 1980s by CEO John Sculley, who came from Pepsi Cola and ironically was recruited by Jobs himself.

The only innovation Sculley introduced at Apple was the legendary flop Newton, because he was unable to match the undeniably huge market potential of the mobile device (later proven correct by the iPhone) with the right timing, the most important skill for an innovative CEO. The technology was far from ready for a device like the Newton; high-speed mobile Internet was lacking and the small processors were still too weak.

Before I digress further: contrasted with the success of executives Tim Cook at Apple and Satya Nadella at Microsoft is a literally and figuratively (numerically and symbolically) equally great success in the person of Nvidia founder Jensen Huang, who has been CEO of the chipmaker he himself founded for more than three decades.

Nor will Salesforce shareholders shed any tears that founder Marc Benioff has been in charge there for more than a quarter century and, according to The Information, is even working on a comeback, as if that was necessary since Benioff was never out of it. In short: whether it's successful founders or successful managers, there are plenty of examples in both camps. Time for a quantitative comparison!

The data shows: founders perform better

Fortunately, the dilemma has since been studied quantitatively and it turns out that Paul Graham's thesis is correct: founder mode is often superior when it comes to value creation, according to an analysis of PitchBook data.

Pitchbook is clear: founders are better than managers.

Pitchbook concludes:

"In each of the past five years, VC-backed founder-led companies grew in value significantly faster than non-founder-led companies. This year, the relative rate of value creation for founder-CEOs was 22.4%, compared to 4.7% for non-founder-CEOs.
In the chosen methodology, the relative rate figure reflects the percentage of value increase between funding rounds, expressed on an annual basis. Among companies that raised funding this year, median value growth was $3.6 million higher among founder-CEOs.
According to Graham, founder-CEOs of high-growth companies are especially "more agile" than professional CEOs. That detail-oriented approach can lead to higher growth through product improvement, or by better motivating front-line employees."

Vulnerable businesses need entrepreneurs

Vulnerable companies need entrepreneurs. In my opinion, which is based on experience and observation but not supported by quantitative research, companies that regardless of their age rely primarily on one product or one revenue source should preferably have a founder at the helm.

Take Google, which is currently under pressure due to the rise of OpenAI with ChatGPT, while their revenue comes largely from ads, especially through the search engine.

As soon as the search engine generates less traffic, revenue will drop, and things will get very tough for Google. CEO Sundar Pichai is clearly a competent manager, but the next few years will show how good an entrepreneur he is.

We need only think back to the temporary successes of Nokia and Blackberry to see what happens when companies that lean on innovation are led by executives unable to adapt their products when they are attacked head-on.

Zuckerberg's flexibility

An excellent example of a relatively young founder who has mastered the craft is Mark Zuckerberg. When Instagram appeared to be a threat to Facebook, he quickly bought it for a billion dollars. An amount many frowned upon, but insiders knew it was a bargain. WhatsApp was about 20 times as expensive, but still a good deal.

When Snapchat posed a major threat to Instagram with Stories, Zuckerberg simply had Instagram copy Snapchat's full functionality, without ego. This saved Instagram. He is currently trying something similar in response to TikTok.

I am convinced that a classical manager would never have bought Instagram and Whatsapp or let Instagram respond so quickly to competition from Snapchat and TikTok. That Zuckerberg has now spent tens of billions on obscure Metaverse adventures is, by comparison, a rounding error.

Conclusion from thirty years as an entrepreneur and investor

Interestingly, many successful entrepreneurs say they have been mentored for years by a small group of experienced advisors who enjoy their trust. For example, ex-Intuit CEO Bill Campbell, about whom the excellent book Trillion Dollar Coach was written, was a famous advisor to Steve Jobs and the founders of Google, among others.

In Silicon Valley, investors and former entrepreneurs Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen are frequently mentioned names as examples of valued advisors. It is precisely in the combination of entrepreneurial experience and investment experience that they prove to be of unique value.

This topic is close to my heart because, after almost ten years as an employee during my school and college days, I have been an entrepreneur for 15 years and an investor and advisor for 15 years since.

Coachable crazies

My conclusion is that coachable entrepreneurs have the greatest chance of success.

One of the advantages of having been an employee first is that I learned mostly how I didn't want to deal with people once I became an employer. During my time as a young entrepreneur at Planet Internet, however, I have been immensely supported by valuable advice, both from entrepreneurs and managers.

In retrospect, I only realized how lucky I was that entrepreneurs like Eckart Wintzen (BSO) and Maarten van den Biggelaar (Quote Media) took the time for me, as did members of the Board of Directors of the Telegraaf and Ben Verwaayen of KPN.

It didn't escape me that Quote, Telegraph and KPN were shareholders, and that perspective obviously always came into play. But that doesn't diminish the quality of their opinions.

Later, as an advisor at the same Quote Media and at dance company ID&T, I saw how talents such as Jort Kelder and Duncan Stutterheim might appear to the outside world to be stubborn, but in practice, at crucial moments, they listened very carefully to advice - and then, as they should, made their own decisions.

It became more difficult in constellations where, on the contrary, many different winds were blowing, as I experienced with the OV Chipkaart: a consortium of public transport companies that competed among themselves, which tendered to a consortium of companies that in turn competed among themselves. 

At the Silicon Valley startup Jaunt, I experienced something similar. This virtual reality pioneer had a mix of tech and media people within both the team and the investors, a true fusion of Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Making VR cameras as well as VR productions, having offices in Palo Alto and Santa Monica and owned by shareholders that ranged from the traditional profit-hungry Silicon Valley vc funds, to Disney and Sky; on top of that also a mix of American, European and Chinese investors. You end up with a sort of mash-up of fried rice and sauerkraut, or a pizza with ginger and kale. Separately excellent, but the combination doesn't work. It lacks focus and a unified mindset, which a good founder as CEO does have.

That's a long run-up to my conclusion: the best CEOs are founders who are maniacal in their vision, but coachable in their execution; call it coachable geeks. And then preferably coachable by both experienced founders *and* managers.

The sunglasses of the Uber driver already gave it away: this week I am in Dubai. 

Thanks for your interest and see you next week!

Categories
AI invest crypto technology

Short news: Elon Musk turns X into a news site, LinkedIn founder deepfakes, Tim Cook & Satya Nadella in Indonesia, intrigue at Techstars and men and women are now equal on Bumble

"Musk shared a deeper vision for the product, which he wants to build into a real-time synthesizer of news and reactions on social media. Effectively, he wants to use AI to combine breaking news and social commentary around big stories, present the compilation live and let you go deeper via chat.

"As more information becomes available, the news release will be updated to include that information. The goal is simple: to provide maximum accurate and timely information, citing the most significant sources."

Am very curious to see what news à la Musk will look like. It was not all hosanna for him this week, as Tesla's margin is now at 5% due to all the price cuts, much lower than is the norm in the auto industry. Furthermore, key employees were laid off, keeping things unsettled around the company.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced during a visit to Indonesia that he will train as many as 840,000 people in the country to use AI and invest $1.7 billion in cloud services there. With both numbers, the question arises: how did they arrive at this figure?

Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook was also in Indonesia, where President Joko Widodo tried to convince him to set up a factory, as yet without success. Indonesia could benefit from the difficult US-China relations with an Apple factory.  

  • Startup incubator Techstars in trouble

Layoffs, cutbacks and intrigue at incubator Techstars, according to this revealing report. 

  • America's most popular iPhone app: old games!

Long barred from the app store but now available for free download: Delta. Play Super Mario and other old Nintendo Gameboy games on the iPhone.

Dating app Bumble became famous because men had to wait for women to seek first contact. Fortunately, few men held their breath until they received a message once. That restriction on male initiative has now been removed with the introduction of a new feature called "opening moves." This allows female users, popularly known as women, to set a prompt to which male suitors can respond to start a conversation.

Donkey Kong on your iPhone or make your opening moves on Bumble, I hope I've given you something to do today.

Have a great Sunday and see you next week!

Categories
technology

Apple Vision Pro better than expected

It costs a little, but then you have something.

Apple has since been surpassed by Microsoft as the world's most valuable company, and the former stock market darling still got a whirl from Wall Street despite rising sales, while virtually all tech companies rose. Perhaps that is precisely why there was a lot of attention on the launch of the Apple Vision Pro, the mixed reality headset that Apple itself interestingly describes as "spatial computing.

When the Apple Vision Pro was announced last year, I wrote: 

'All the omens are that the Apple Vision Pro will be a flop - a flop by Apple standards, that is. But that's not a bad thing at all. At least Apple is trying to develop something new again, and that's better than unimaginatively buying back its own shares for hundreds of billions, as it has in recent years.' 

Because the price is too high at $3,500 to break open a mass market, there is no reason to change opinion about the Vision Pro's short-term business impact.

Apple is on its way to $500 billion in annual sales, so before any new product raises an eyebrow when going through the annual figures, it has to come close to the annual sales of Apple's least contributing product. That's the iPad, which still did $7 billion in sales last quarter. To get anywhere near that, Apple would have to sell a few million copies of the Apple Vision Pro, which is not going to happen with the current model at this price.

Vanity Fair was invited by Apple CEO Tim Cook to learn about the Apple Vision Pro, which led to this revelation from the reporter:

'When I turn it off, every other device feels flat and boring: my 75-inch OLED TV feels like a TV from the '90s; my iPhone feels like a flip phone from yesteryear, and even the real world around me feels surprisingly flat. And here's the problem. 

In the same way I can't imagine driving a car without a stereo, in the same way I can't imagine not having a phone to communicate with people or take pictures of my children, in the same way I can't imagine trying to work without a computer, I can envision a day when we all can't imagine living without augmented reality (AR). 

When we become more and more encapsulated by technology, to the point that we crave these glasses like a drug [...], the dopamine rush that this resolution of AR can deliver.'

Most reviews were less lyrical than this one, but mostly positive. The bottom line is that Apple has once again succeeded in developing a surprisingly special and high-quality product. And yet, there's something nagging.

Apple tries to solve an unsolvable problem

Wired correctly states that a "killer app" has not yet been found for the Apple Vision Pro. It is not yet the ultimate entertainment device and that is not because of the quality of the image, the sound or the controls, because they are extremely good. It's because of the applications, and then not even the "content," the traditional video narration form in picture and sound. The problem lies in the lack of new communication applications between people.

Now I am not neutral when it comes to VR and AR, having worked at VR pioneer Jaunt for a few years. I experienced the exact same experience in Jaunt's test lab as the Vanity Fair journalist, because good VR has an almost hallucinatory effect. But you remain a spectator in someone else's film.

And the core of the Internet's success is not information, transaction or entertainment. It is communication between people. The great breakthrough of social media was not caused by expensive content from movie studios or game developers, but by movies like Charlie Bit My Finger.

Despite all the success of social media like Facebook and Instagram, the messaging service Whatsapp is being used more intensively by users. And just when it seemed that the market for messaging apps was saturated, Telegram managed to attract as many as a quarter of a billion new users in 2023, bringing the total number of users to 700 million people. The demand for communication options between people seems inexhaustible.

So the big question for Apple becomes not how it can develop even flashier VR and AR applications, or how it gets Netflix to create apps for the Vision Pro; but whether it manages to develop interpersonal communication applications for the Apple Vision Pro that are as useful, funny and addictive as ever text messaging. As an enthusiast, I wish Apple would focus on that and, for example, permanently disband its entire automotive division. How many electric automakers does the world need?

Is TikTok the answer?

Especially when it comes to communication between people, TikTok has proven to be a phenomenon. When it seemed like the social media market had been completely nailed shut by Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with Snapchat and Twitch as boutique stores, dances appeared on this originally Chinese app that were emulated worldwide. For dance requires no spoken language, only a sense of rhythm or a glaring lack of embarrassment.

Meanwhile, TikTok has become so big that Wired wrote an extensive profile on the company's Singaporean CEO, who had to answer to the US Congress for the second time last week, with a senator going out of his way to appear as racist and anti-Chinese as possible to his constituents. Incidentally, the Singaporean Internet responded within 24 hours with a hilarious video.

I'm curious what a TikTok app on the Vision Pro would look like and what you could do with it. Dance together, or watch movies together, so that using the Vision Pro at least becomes a shared experience?

Or is it Joe Rogan?

Once upon a time, the world's most popular podcast maker Joe Rogan hosted the TV show Fear Factor, a derivative of Now or Neverland. In that program, contestants from the Netherlands and Belgium had to complete tasks such as jumping out of a building while holding an egg that was not supposed to break, or eating worms while Hans Kraay Junior yelled at them "do it for your country, eat those worms for the Netherlands!

Joe Rogan, the American Hans Kraay Junior, signed a new contract with Spotify this week that will net him as much as a quarter of a billion dollars. Interestingly, it is not even an exclusive contract with Spotify, so Rogan will be seen and heard on multiple platforms.

Rogan's podcasts are recorded representations of the most basic form of communication since the dawn of mankind: two people talking to each other. Rogan's success lies in his curiosity.

He is actually interested in his guests and never tends to want to be clever at the expense of his guests. Maybe he's not that smart, which is always the criticism of him, but perhaps that's exactly what makes his podcasts accessible to a wide audience.

I would not be surprised if there are millions of people who, with an Apple Vision Pro on their heads, want the feeling of sitting at the table next to Joe Rogan and Elon Musk, or Quentin Tarantino or Lance Armstrong, as a third person. Not even to participate on equal footing, but to experience an interesting conversation up close. The mere fact that this kind of application is relatively easy to make is a reason to conclude that the Vision Pro is underrated.

Because it may quietly take five years and three versions of the Vision Pro before the device finds its killer apps combined with a good price, but then Apple will have a new successful form of personal computer on its hands alongside the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Losing seventy billion in market cap the week the Apple Vision Pro hit the market? Investors should be ashamed of themselves.

Categories
AI crypto

Elon Musk and his exes. And Apple CEO Tim Cook lost AI top talent to Google, but strikes blow with savings accounts

This week, almost all tech news seemed to be about artificial intelligence. After all, major innovations in AI capture the imagination and are recognizable to all, whereas a breakthrough in biotechnology, for example, is often literally visible only through a microscope to a limited group of experts.

Why do you need $300 million when you just raised $10 billion?

When $300 million dollars is paid by top investors for just over one (1) percent of OpenAI, the company that is the creator of ChatGPT, it deserves extensive attention. Especially considering that Microsoft invested $10 billion (!) in OpenAI less than three months ago, having already put a billion into the company in 2019. That 11 billion surely hasn't run out yet, so the question arises as to why OpenAI held this additional round of investment.

The main reason OpenAI wants to have a strong relationship with some of the biggest tech investors in the world is the burgeoning battle for the AI market. The time is approaching when really big money is needed, think billions rather than millions, for a company to join the battle of giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon who are all competing in this market. After all, AI is too important for all players to ignore. In fact, for Google, the success of OpenAI is life-threatening. With shareholders behind it like Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive, K2 Global and Founders Fund (from Peter Thiel, the legendary investor in Facebook and Palantir, among others), OpenAI can now operate independently of partner Microsoft. With an estimated market value of $27 billion to $29 billion, OpenAI is already worth more right now than, to name a crossroad, companies like Spotify and vaccine maker BioNTech, companies that have also successfully capitalized on major developments.

This 'photo' was generated entirely with Midjourney and is eerily real

CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai fight over AI talent

Meanwhile, in the race for the best AI technology, Apple with Siri and Amazon with Alexa are far behind OpenAI. The Information reported this week that three of Apple's top programmers therefore made the move to Google, despite attempts by Apple CEO Tim Cook to retain them. The personal offer from Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who is committed to catching up with OpenAI, was apparently irresistible. Would any CEO of a European publicly traded company ever have made a personal effort to attract programmers, or to retain them, as Cook and Pichai are doing? I suspect the European gentry, for they are almost all men, feel too big for that.

How difficult it is to make a good AI application proved Snapchat, which received a 1 for the "My AI" feature from users, urging them to remove it from the app. It was not Snap's week, which saw revenue drop after which the stock slumped 17%. Dropbox announced it was laying off 16% of its staff while investing heavily in attracting new AI developers. This indicates that it is difficult, if not impossible, to retrain programmers to become AI developers.

Elon Musk, his X's and his ex

The wait is on for Elon Musk to get involved in the AI war with a company, but he seems too busy trying to ruin Twitter. He does constantly criticize OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman since he sold his stake in OpenAI to Microsoft. It is remarkable, to say the least, that Musk, in an open letter, called for a sort of six-month moratorium in AI development, but in the meantime continues to work on funding his own AI startup, which he alternately calls TruthGPT (as with now unemployed chief Tucker Carlson) or X-AI. That X should normally be in there from Musk; he previously started X.com and, of course, SpaceX. It's lucky it's Tesla and not Texla. His latest son is named X Æ A-Xii (call sign: Bert). And the Æ is in the poor kid's name because it is the elven spelling of the term AI. Musk's baby mama, Canadian artist Grimes, stood out this week by giving permission to use her voice in AI-generated music: "I'll split 50% royalties on any successful AI generated song that uses my voice. Same deal as I would with any artist i collab with. Feel free to use my voice without penalty.' This is especially notable because there is concern that AI will make the entire profession of voice actors obsolete. It will be interesting to follow what the implications will be for singers.

The Apple Card with rounded corners, Steve Jobs wouldn't have wanted it any other way

Finally: Apple is going to make mincemeat of the banks and does it with ... Goldman Sachs?

It had been expected for years and last week it was here: Apple made its entrance into the banking world. Remarkable remains the choice of Goldman Sachs as a partner, because Apple hardly uses the Goldman brand but uses the prestigious bank mainly for the banking license and as a colorless and odorless handler of savings transactions, as a kind of white label. While Apple rarely, if ever, buys market share based on price, when it comes to savings accounts the high interest rate actually stands out: 4.15%, as much as 10 times higher than the US national average. 

What is typical of Apple, however, is its great ease of use. The first step is to apply for an Apple Card, a credit card, which unfortunately is only available in the US for now. All spending via that card will default to 1% to 3% of the purchase amount in the form of what Apple has called "Daily Cash," a balance that is calculated and credited daily. Those who then open a savings account from the Apple Wallet and link it to the Apple Card, an action of no more than a few clicks, will see Daily Cash credited to the savings account daily and automatically receive the high interest rate of 4.15%. The savings account is free, there is no minimum deposit and there are no penalties if balances are withdrawn from the savings account. It is also possible to transfer funds from other banks to the Apple-Goldman savings account.

And precisely the latter is a nightmare for traditional banks. Because while there are other, lesser-known banks, giving even higher savings rates, they are not trusted brands like Apple. The combination of Apple Card with Apple Pay and the Apple Wallet is so seamless and simple that it will be difficult for banks to compete. It seems plausible that European banks will launch a hefty lobby in Brussels, combined with legal action, to make it difficult for Apple to enter the European market in the same way it does in the US.

Event: Consensus 2023

Nearly fifteen thousand people attended the leading crypto event Consensus in Austin, Texas last week, and that doesn't include the types who are too stingy to buy a conference ticket because they think they already know everything and want to tell you that the best networking happens in the pub. The sounds from Austin were universally positive, especially about the quality of the projects that survived the crypto winter. I found the most notable contribution to Consensus, viewed from a distance because I wasn't there myself, to be the interview with journalist Brady Dale, whose book about Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX will soon be published. Dale emphatically points to decentralized finance, DeFi, as the main solution against fraud and mismanagement, precisely where there is no central party like a stock exchange like FTX. I also found it striking that Dale specifically mentions memecoin Dogecoin as a relevant crypto alongside Bitcoin and Ethereum:

'To me, Dogecoin is the chain that said, A story, a character, a concept can have a value, and if a community believes in that character and works together in a distributed way to make the idea bigger, the value of the concept will grow and so will its currency. Dogecoin has really made that clear. It's not just about DOGE, it's about that whole idea of collaboration around a concept, and that's why I'm betting Dogecoin will be the comeback kid of blockchains, again and again, in the near future.

- Brady Dale

Good links

  • Check out this link to some particularly practical prompts to use yourself at ChatGPT.
  • Startup funding is under severe pressure. These four charts show that, and in Miami, investment in startups actually fell more than 90%. Partly a result of the focus in that region on crypto startups, which were struggling.
  • In the Netherlands, more and more investors are asking startup founders not to pay themselves a salary. Here are five reasons why they should.
  • Unknown identifies nearly 1,000 Bitcoin wallets belonging to Russian secret services. Very clever.
  • The U.S. government is about to take over First Republic Bank. I wrote earlier this month about what kind of bank First Republic is. Or was?

Spotlight 9: Meta and Microsoft the big winners of the week

Meta and Microsoft as outliers after good quarterly results

Reader Raoul Kuiper rightly asked me why I did include Bitcoin in this portfolio when I don't own it myself because of its energy consumption and associated carbon emissions. By way of explanation, I created this fictitious Spotlight 9 portfolio to track sentiment in the tech world on a weekly basis. I think when, as happened last week, virtually all major tech companies plus the Dow Jones and S&P 500 are all in the minus, that is relevant to the entire world of technology and innovation. Bitcoin and Ethereum I included because those are the most widely held assets of the hundreds of millions of people investing in crypto worldwide. Of the Spotlight 9, I personally find Microsoft, Apple and Ethereum interesting. The projects and companies I find otherwise fascinating, such as Polygon (MATIC), are usually too small to have an impact on stock market sentiment and the economy and therefore not included in the Spotlight 9.

Amazon, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft and Meta published good quarterly earnings this week, and Microsoft and Meta in particular benefited. Microsoft is expected to benefit greatly from the integration of AI, based in part on technology from OpenAI, into various products and services. Zuckerberg explained to investors that Meta uses a lot of AI to better target their TikTok competitor Instagram Reels, and that struck a chord: Meta shares rose nearly 13% in the last 5 days.

It was, in short, in every way the week of AI.