âYouâre excited about a âkiller long-sleeve shirtâ⌠made by robots?!â
100%.
1000% if itâs the same company, thatâs literally âreindustrializing America and manufacturing fabrics for defense and space.â
Exactly the same way, Iâm excited about a color Game Boy/N64 made using metal 3D printing via robotics [100%], in general, and especially if itâs a side project from the same people making drones for US defense [modretro, anduril].
Using that as a tangible example of a couple of more abstract concepts Iâll be diving into.
1st up, anyone doing anything substantive gets lots of âconfusionâ and internet friction. Itâs not a bug, but a feature, demonstrating theyâre doing something worthwhile [cf. example above].
Full disclosure, I say that as a repeat exited founder [AI & B2B SaaS data/analytics], EY Entrepreneur of the Year, occasional lecturer for Harvard, Hopkins, MIT etc. on Entrepreneurship and Innovation [resistance & adoption], History of Economic Development and Capitalism, and Workforce Development [usually named talks focusing on interdisciplinary history, business, engineering, material science - background includes PhD/Fulbright/Sorbonneâs Interdisciplinary center for science & humanities], and served as technology & entrepreneurship adviser to the White House & Presidential commissions under multiple administrations - also, someone personally who started out working work 2nd shift on the line, one of multiple jobs while at a community college. An investor too, proudly in
@anatar, and other robotics, AI, blockchain, and technology/science across farming, manufacturing, finance, etc. - personally betting on generative tech and new biz models to benefit US and humanity - and doubling down via family foundation to teach kids/young adults how to use AI/Robotics to build IRL businesses in rural Kentucky.
So full disclosure, the answer represents my take, informed by a very specific perspective above, doesnât represent any of the companies above, and may not be for you, may not be for you now. As a startup founder i donât want universal adoption, but rather âcommon knowledgeâ friction - that shows me iâm doing something large, worthwhile, non-obvious and needed - itâs not just price to play but my moat.
But for those interested in the broader questions of how generative tech, on its own, especially when domestically based in regionally resilient supply chain, benefits US citizens overall, and specifically workforce development against a demographic inversion curve, and, why is doing a consumer t shirt not just a cherry on top but a power move that should be HBS case study in being rock awesome, read on.
Many ways to take conversation - and since weâre asking big questions, weâre going to have to be precise in our thinking and avoid non sequiturs [i think X, iâve seen Y, i have concerns about Z, etc - some tbad things can happen A, what about B, how are you / have you C, etc.] - could go into onshoring as core to regional resilience, which forms an anti-brittle national supply chain topology required for global autonomy - aka specific unwinding not just of offshoring but 40 years post Bretton Woods and recreation of endemic farming, manufacturing [scalable output as metric, creating jobs as result], and forward facing deployment, globally and beyond.
But I think this conversation really revolves around core assumptions - aka generative technology. Even outside of global positioning, multi-planetary aspirations, benefiting US citizens, humanity, the starting point is: Does generative tech create markets - aka does it cannibalize current jobs, merely increase the size of the current market, or de novo create new markets? How you answer that question basically dictates the entire conversation, not just what answer, but how you answer it. Do you look to history as an example, even if it rubs oneâs assumptions, much less current/loud/vocal sentiment, the wrong way [on that note, X algorithm has been having one of its midcurve overweighting runs lately].
Generative tech, by definition, creates markets. Thatâs not better/faster/cheaper, but net new, de novo. Thatâs not big slice of zero um pie, ot bigger pie, but a whole new pie, a whole new stack in different flavors, not just pumpkin meets lemon meringue or trad apple, put pizza pies and some deconstructed quiche thing.
Really? Give me an example. Print. Print was an awful idea; no one read, but there was a cottage industry that seemed to get outsourced, and the printing press only looked to make things worse. Many people had âconcernsâ about its automation [looked like a manual automaton], putting manuscript writers out of work. Many had seen the dark downside of a print shop. Many couldnât see how the printing press would âimproveâ anything; others didnât get it. It seemed to take a bad situation, outsource, and make it worse, automated. [notably exogenous power funded such thinking, against the populaceâs own interests, in very specific ways, for very specific reasons, but thatâs a history lesson for another time].
ButâŚâŚ the generative tech created the market. It didnât serve it, didnât commoditize it, but created a new market, and new markets on top of markets, benefitting participants in ways they couldnât see at the time, much less predict. Thatâs the nature of generative tech. Print created literacy itself. Full stop. Didnât meet the rising demand of literacy for print, the artifacts created by generative tech generated demand itself. Full stop.
The market didnât shrink; it exploded. The automated tech that âtook awayâ jobs from manuscript copyists created many more jobs than could ever be imagined. Literacy went from ~5% to whatever you think it is today [give X comments lately, could still be 5%]. Copyists became printers and mechanical engineers.
The artifact had utility. Books went from an annual salary plus to the price of a dinner. Rather than diminishing demand, it created new demand. This seems very counterintuitive to mid curve. How does automated production benefit the person making the artifact? It actually creates more demand for more artifacts in more ways. Starting with utility. Being able to access an automated tech artifact didnât satisfy extended demand; it created new demand. You didnât have a book, you now had one, and then wanted more, a library if you will, and each of those things had benefits [how to plant/farm/start a biz/philosophy/entertainment/etc]. Yes, the automated copyist robot âtook jobs away from copyistsâ but it created not only new jobs for print, but more demand, more jobs, higher wages, new kinds of jobs, in new kinds of economic models.
Now the cascading effects. First automation, especially localized creation of tech, creates more demand, benefiting all - aka literacy, that fact that youâre reading at all now. Then, meta, it actually creates a new market, print, media, aka the thing you're reading on now [McLuhan Guttenberg Galaxy - and much more broadly, software as âmediaâ and andy hardware stack requiring âsoftwareâ, but again, another story]. Then, the super meta, the markets of markets, not just the market for the artifact [because now scale abundance creates new markets but utility unlocks others previously inaccessible due to production constraints -x- imagination]. Books at scale allow me to do other business besides selling books - aka teaches me how to do ledger/credit, compute/automate other things besides copying letters, creates other markets -x- philosophy/theology to do those things [no need to be beholden to a foreign lord holding supply chain power, actually fictional story/path of how to break out DIY it.] Said differently, generative tech changes not only the business, but actually how business is done - not just a new market or market of markets but market mechanics - aka new capital formation.
âBut how does that benefit the worker?â Uh, yes, fewer hand copiers, but more printing jobs, and jobs printing unlocks, aka new types of construction, ârediscovered ad fontes / that âwhole renaissance thingâ, and also distributed banking, aka credit/investment to found new companies themselves. This is what we call a virtuous cycle.
I still donât get it. How does that benefit the worker/me? Um, you could unlock assets via automated production to create not only new markets but new value capture de novo? Huh/what? Capitalism, literally, The Birth of Capitalism - The Birth of the Middle Class. If youâre not a noble lord and arenât living as an indentured peasant, thank the automated robotic machines for the printing press. If you can read, for work/value creation, or to explore/pleasure, get down on your knees and kiss the automated tech robots call the âprinting pressâ.
But Dr. Rosenthal, thatâs old-timey stuff, itâs not applicable today. Core idea: utility via automated benefits via new creation. Encyclopedias were a good biz, not super useful; maybe you checked out once a week/day. Internet/Google search was awful, it put so manyâ encyclopedia writers, printers, warehousemen, salesmen' out of business. What about the jobs itâs taking? I donât get how this helps! But you search quite a bit, likely more than once a day, it created new jobs, not just the same thing but bigger/better/cheaper [software/hardware/media etc] but new things unlocked by that - that medieval manuscript copier or 1950s encyclopedia editor you could never have imagined.
But robots, what about the bots, sure that not âtechâ it doesnât work in the same way as print, code, etc. Um, machine bots via the presses. Hardware for the software for the media. Secretaries replaced via Word/Google Docs, accountants via XL/Google Docs, art âdepartments via PPT/Canva. But thatâs all abstract, i donât like abstract [insert whatâs this have to do / 2001 space monkeys/ monolith]. Think about it this way, if you donât buy into on shore defense resilience, beyond global exploration, or if you donât by into history, aka that generative tech creates - transformas the current into something new, traumatic for the current imagination that canât imagine the recreation [FWIW this is why we call it a renaissance], then straightline tink in terms of demographic and what is replacing what and what that unlocks.
Example. We have an investment in an agriculture robotics company - Tiny Land Drones. But doesnât that take away US farming jobs? Um, no. Those jobs were already replaced by chemicals. The US ag system went from manual labor [usually child] for weeding, to chemical, spraying chemicals to prevent weeds. This was not an accident; the demographics collapsed [fewer kids, youth left the farms], but chemicals replaced. The robots donât replace those jobs, but they are a chemical replacement for those jobs. How does that help? Well, the chemicals run into land and soil, and the seed companies bioengineer seeds to resist, but thatâs again, another history lesson. The point is that farming is not viable for anything less than mega aggregation without bots. The bots unlock the regional resilience, say to grow crops for textiles, or other niceties such as food. Which âkeepsâ jobs, but also creates new jobs, the bots are made here, hardware and software, and service layer of deployment, and with right to repair, and, and, and. But thatâs investor talk. No, this farmer-founded, invested, client-based, and led.
All my 2 cents, but, to review:
âIâve seen, i think, the downside of X/Y/Zâ - may not be for you / non sequitor - not any one artifact, shirt, company, but more broadly flows from market creation, history, entrepreneurship, innovation [resistance/adoption], dynamic workforce re/creation, etc.
How does US/Regional/Based production help US citizens, and humanity beyond the globe in space efforts - hopefully pretty clear, bordering on definitional.
How does generative tech help US workers? Should be definitional, generative tech, generates new markets, not only expands current, but utility creates demand, and cascading markets, not just businesses, but net-new markets otherwise unimaginable. Think printing press âbotâ, internet hardware âbotâ, etc. Super salient in demographic inversion [cf farm bots], but the real bet is in utility through automation, benefiting at scale. Full cards on the table, I personally think this goes exponential, new utility via automation compounded via new capital formation mechanisms and new generative tech for on-demand abundance - aka not hardware textile vs LLM, or IRL vs AI but bother and, and wrapped in new capital formation [increasingly participatory, think ledger/credit, aka mortgage on house for ownership, fractional equity stock/NASDAW/401k, pre IPO stocks/prediciton markets], but those are lessons for other times nd not necessary for this -- but do introduce what might be at play, and, if the historical example rhymes, that means generative tech led to rise fo middle class, your home ownership etc, in addition to your reading machines/robots and your ability to read itself.
So if all thatâs in play, and youâre rocking it in regional resilience for defense, space, both crucial and epic, literally using gen tech not to cannibalize to participate in tried and true historical lessons that created capitalism and the rise of the middle class, aka that utility creates abundance, and doing that in broader context of other parts of the complete rework stack with agentic creation and next gen capitalism, and then you offer white label production for other players, then, while recreating the world, you put it on the back of a shirt. Yeah, 100% excited.
Weâre at a show for the ages, epic, historical - front row seats, good sound, artists interacting with the crowd - 1000% gonna get the shirt.