PEoperator⚡️

I run a medium sized business. AI is changing how we operate. At every level of the organization, people are more efficient, move faster, and accomplish more. There are two distinct areas where we see ROI. First, the obvious one: AI as your own personal analyst. Rather than ask for data or analysis, managers can just ask AI. It’s not perfect. It’s not always right. But for less than 20% of the effort (prompting), you can usually get more 80% of your needs met. Investigating sales performance. Mapping customers by region for new locations. Exploring vendor purchases. Planning capacity utilization. Building shift schedules. Rewriting LOIs based on old ones. Building DCF models. Designing quantitative comp plans. Identifying (via pictures) stray/found items in the warehouse. Voicing and aggregating sales call notes. These are everyday tasks that previously required time and some assistance, often from an analyst. Not anymore. It’s difficult to calculate the ROI on these sorts of gains. Obviously you can make up numbers to quantify anything. Many probably do. But how do you quantify moving faster, making quicker, better decisions, saving time, and empowering managers? We are moving faster. Speed absolutely wins and the faster we can move, the more we will win. I’m not going to waste time quantifying ROI on what anyone can see is improving the way we operate. That would be giving all the speed gains right back! The second bucket is much more quantifiable. These are discrete projects designed with a specific purpose. A quoting platform saving hours per quote. An inside sales leads dashboard that generates leads. Websites built for a fraction of the cost. Inventory optimization tools that reduce capital employed, COGS, and improve forecasting. Because these have a single purpose, they’re easy to quantify. But in my view, this bucket is less valuable than the first. The first is transforming how everyone operates. Unlimited potential. The second is raising the floor. From the outside looking in, it can seem like AI is just a new cost center. If you aren’t inside the organization, the ROI may not be obvious to you. But there are other things you probably take for granted. What’s the ROI on the computers you use? What’s the ROI on internet connectivity? On your office building? Lots of stuff gets taken for granted that no reasonable person would ever waste time calculating ROI on. That doesn’t mean you should be indiscriminate. Managers absolutely have to monitor spending and ensure proper use. Security guardrails have never been more important. There’s a saying, “I know I’m wasting half my marketing dollars, I just don’t know which half!” That’s a little where AI is today. But it’s obvious AI is the future. Anyone can see that. And the winners will be the regular ol companies who adopt early, monitor progress, and lean in. The losers will be the ones so obsessed with calculating an ROI on every token dollar that they miss the revolution.

Chamath reveals his company's AI token costs are doubling every 45 days but productivity is only up 5% "I sat down with my CTO today, I said how are we doing on token spend. And he said the most incredible thing, he said right now, our token costs are doubling every 45 days. I said well what is the downstream productivity? And he said maybe 5% max." "So my costs are doubling every 45 days, my upside is essentially flat. He said honestly, what we're finding out is that you need to use a lot more tokens to get to this next iteration of improvement because we've effectively already asymptoted." "We're going to take a step back and try to figure out what to do. I don't know how many other companies will actually go through this reckoning now, but the point is everybody in the next three or four years will for sure go through it." "I suspect that if you can get out now, you should get out now before all of that starts to seep into the water table. Because I think that's probably what allows you to get out at a huge price and raise a huge amount of money."

I run a medium sized business. AI is changing how we operate. At every level of the organization, people are more efficient, move faster, and accomplish more. There are two distinct areas where we see ROI. First, the obvious one: AI as your own personal analyst. Rather than ask for data or analysis, managers can just ask AI. It’s not perfect. It’s not always right. But for less than 20% of the effort (prompting), you can usually get more 80% of your needs met. Investigating sales performance. Mapping customers by region for new locations. Exploring vendor purchases. Planning capacity utilization. Building shift schedules. Rewriting LOIs based on old ones. Building DCF models. Designing quantitative comp plans. Identifying (via pictures) stray/found items in the warehouse. Voicing and aggregating sales call notes. These are everyday tasks that previously required time and some assistance, often from an analyst. Not anymore. It’s difficult to calculate the ROI on these sorts of gains. Obviously you can make up numbers to quantify anything. Many probably do. But how do you quantify moving faster, making quicker, better decisions, saving time, and empowering managers? We are moving faster. Speed absolutely wins and the faster we can move, the more we will win. I’m not going to waste time quantifying ROI on what anyone can see is improving the way we operate. That would be giving all the speed gains right back! The second bucket is much more quantifiable. These are discrete projects designed with a specific purpose. A quoting platform saving hours per quote. An inside sales leads dashboard that generates leads. Websites built for a fraction of the cost. Inventory optimization tools that reduce capital employed, COGS, and improve forecasting. Because these have a single purpose, they’re easy to quantify. But in my view, this bucket is less valuable than the first. The first is transforming how everyone operates. Unlimited potential. The second is raising the floor. From the outside looking in, it can seem like AI is just a new cost center. If you aren’t inside the organization, the ROI may not be obvious to you. But there are other things you probably take for granted. What’s the ROI on the computers you use? What’s the ROI on internet connectivity? On your office building? Lots of stuff gets taken for granted that no reasonable person would ever waste time calculating ROI on. That doesn’t mean you should be indiscriminate. Managers absolutely have to monitor spending and ensure proper use. Security guardrails have never been more important. There’s a saying, “I know I’m wasting half my marketing dollars, I just don’t know which half!” That’s a little where AI is today. But it’s obvious AI is the future. Anyone can see that. And the winners will be the regular ol companies who adopt early, monitor progress, and lean in. The losers will be the ones so obsessed with calculating an ROI on every token dollar that they miss the revolution.