Flow State #5 - What kind of future are we headed towards?
Existentialism is the name of the game: From Anthropic's death knell for public SaaS stocks to the "Japanification" of the American dream.
Welcome to Edition 5 of Superfluid: Flow State where I curate the smartest takes on startups, AI, and capital allocation from the 75+ articles I read every week. I’ll give you the key insight from 4 of the best pieces that I consumed over the last week that you can immediately apply to your business (in <2 minutes).
Feel free to hit reply and let me know what you thought of this week’s article. I respond to every email.
Today's word count: 484
Read time: 2 min 10sec.
Buying Futures, Renting the Past by kyla scanlon
We’re living in a split reality where half the population is obsessed with the future and the other half is desperately clinging to the past. Everyone is hyper-informed, hyper-cynical, and hyper-burnt out, yet we keep pushing forward despite craving a world where we’re not constantly overstimulated.
From a tech perspective, people have forgotten how to think about the messy middle of execution. We’ve jumped straight from crazy dreams to talking with absolute certainty about what will happen, completely skipping over the unknowns between here and the endgame (this article breaks it down quite nicely).
It’s part marketing-speak, part-naivety and part-necessity. In a world where narrative drives valuations, uncertainty is expensive.
My advice is to peer through the noise, put some blinders on, control what you can and keep pushing on.
Japan is What Late-Stage Capitalist Decline Looks Like by Ellie
The state of the Japanese economy has been well publicized over the last 30+ years. Since monetary intervention in 1991, Japan has progressively declined, manifesting through society in a few notable ways: overworked and underpaid labor, a social loneliness epidemic, and hyper-convenience slop.
This article walks through how all three are starting to emerge within the American economy. We have far more services geared towards making people’s lives more convenient, a growing lack of socialization amongst Gen Z, and with AI, increased pressure to move faster, be more productive, and take on more responsibility as companies shed their labor forces.
The comparison between the US and Japan is interesting to think about, especially when considering where we might be headed more broadly.
Will Vertical AI Survive? by Nihar Bobba
Undoubtedly the biggest question being asked over the last two weeks with Claude launching its vertical specific plugins, wiping out ~$300B+ in public market cap. This happened sooner than most expected, and now startups are scrambling to figure out how they become more defensible.
I've written before about the importance of tackling complexity as part of your product. In this article, Nihar breaks this down further and defines it as the last mile of AI: coordinating intelligence with real-world liability and regulatory endpoints, managing relationships with authorities and auditors, handling exceptions that models can't anticipate, and delivering outcomes that transcend both the digital and physical world.
Uplevel or Replace? by Liz Christo
This is a good tactical reminder on hiring for future growth versus maintaining and nurturing talent. I’ve seen more than a few companies derail their trajectory by mismanaging their growth talent strategy at the executive level.
The attributes you hire for at each stage are fundamentally different. It’s rare to find someone who’s effective from Seed through Series D and beyond. The real question isn’t whether someone is talented, it’s whether they can grow fast enough to match the pace the business needs, or whether you need to bring in someone external who can take you to the next stage.
Forward this to a founder who needs better signal.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you thought about the format. Feel free to hit reply and let me know, I respond to every email.
Abhi