CRED + Meta: The Ultimate Privilege Marketing Machine?

Five years ago, in my blog post entitled InCREDible Rise Of CRED, I predicted that targeted ads would eventually be the business model of CRED. My prediction has aged well, with ad tech major Meta taking a 25% stake in the startup for $900 million in what’s widely regarded as the first step towards acquiring a majority … Read more

Why The Kimi Panic Is Misplaced

Every few months, there’s an AI breakthrough from USA or China, which triggers another round of hand-wringing in India. The latest example is Kimi K3, a frontier LLM model released by Beijing-based company Moonshot AI last month. Kimi K3 is widely regarded as rivaling the performance of the best American models. As a Free Open … Read more

SaaSpocalypse Now – Part 2

In SaaSpocalypse Now – Part 1, we saw five updates on the SaaSpocalypse narrative: SaaSpocalypse shaaspocalypse Discounts ahoy AI hits point SAAS hard AI does more than coding SaaS can do AI better than AI can do software In this second part, we will cover five more. 6. New twist in the SaaSpocalypse tale The … Read more

SaaSpocalypse Now – Part 1

In a series of posts published on this blog well before the term SaaSpocalypse was coined, I predicted that AI will kill many SAAS companies (see the RELEVANT READING section at the end of this post). Here’s a quick recap of those posts: “SaaS Repatriation” is the replacement of SaaS applications with bespoke software built in-house … Read more

Disruption Can Only Be Caused By New Technology – Not Better Functionality

In Technology Matters – Just Not At The Top Of Funnel, I argued that technology matters at the MOFU and BOFU stages of the sales funnel (though not at the TOFU stage). In this post, I up the ante of this argument and posit that disruptions in B2B technology are caused by paradigm shifts in technology – and … Read more

What Does A McKinsey Consultant Tell His AI Chatbot When It Hallucinates?

According to the Business Insider article entitled Inside the AI boom that’s transforming how consultants work at McKinsey, BCG, and Deloitte, At McKinsey, consultants are using an in-house generative AI chatbot called Lilli. Users enter their requests into Lilli, which points users to appropriate experts within the firm. This reminded me of a very similar … Read more

How To Kill The UPI Duopoly

From: Ketharaman Swaminathan To: editet@timesgroup.com Subject: Cap Two Two UPI Players; Clearly Say, No Free Digi Lunch This has reference to the opeds entitled Cap Two Two UPI Players by Bikash Narayan Mishra and Clearly Say, No Free Digi Lunch by Ateesh Tankha in today’s Economic Times. India’s UPI is a world-class innovation. However, beneath the shine lies a serious vulnerability in … Read more

Actionable Insights From myBAR ChatGPT Data Analysis

In myBAR Data Analysis By ChatGPT, we saw various insights from ChatGPT based on crunching the data in myBAR dataset (For those who haven’t read that post, myBAR dataset contains ratings and reviews given by me to 600-odd books I’ve read in the last 15-odd years). This analysis happened on data in a spreadsheet. Some … Read more

myBAR Data Analysis By ChatGPT

I recently asked ChatGPT to dive into my book collection, crunch the numbers, and give me insights into my reading behavior. This blog post is the result of that exercise. I’ve read over two thousand books. You’ll find some of them in my bookshelf. But many books I’ve read are missing from it since: I … Read more

“Will AI Kill SaaS?” Is The Wrong Question

Last week saw a severe meltdown of software company stocks on Wall Street. Salesforce: −47% Figma: −83% Hubspot: −71% ServiceNow: −53% Workday: −45% Click here for a more complete list. According to Wall Street Journal, the $300 billion drawdown in software stocks was caused by the threat posed by new AI vibe coding tools to … Read more