Annanth Aravinthan

1/ This week's Q3 earnings call w/ $FB will likely go down as one of the biggest bets in history. IMO they'll spend >$170B over the next decade on building the metaverse. Since it's my largest position, I've been spending a lot of time reflecting. Attached are my "scratch notes"

I talked to two Israeli sources on why Iranian launches continue to increase, despite US-Israeli claims that they have destroyed almost all of the launchers. Here is what they said: 1) The 90–95% drop in volume claimed by CENTCOM earlier in the month was probably a temporary lull as Iran repositioned its remaining launchers into hardened sites. Independent satellite analysis suggests that a significant portion of the "80% destruction" claimed by the IDF actually hit high-fidelity decoys. 2) Despite fewer launchers, the lethality per strike has increased. Iran's shift to cluster warheads has allowed a single missile to impact multiple locations simultaneously, compensating for the lower volume of launches 3) Iran has successfully set up mobile, underground units able to fire at steady rates. Iran used that quiet period to move their remaining ~100-120 heavy launchers into "Super-Hardened" facilities 4) Iran is utilizing its Zolfaqar and Dezful road-mobile launchers. These units move from hardened tunnels to pre-surveyed launch spots, fire, and return underground in under 10 minutes, often before coalition drones can re-task for a strike. 5) Because these launching units are decentralized, it is very hard for US and Israeli intelligence to get info on them. Israel and the United States do not have an answer to this problem. That is why they are trying escalation on energy sources instead. But that is backfiring.

@nachkari Double down it is.. x.com/ProtagorasTO/s…

@nachkari completely went over my head 😂

@nachkari Why do you think it won't be longer?

44% of votes think the Strait will be open in 2-4 weeks. Hard to know how this plays out but.. - The regime has more resolve than the WH thought - They supposedly have months of drone inventory left - Its not clear if Trump will double down or exit I'm in the >13 weeks camp

How long until the Strait of Hormuz is safely reopened?

@johnarnold Ah I see, makes sense. I was largely thinking about before someone dies.

@ProtagorasTO how do you do that after you die? someone has to have ownership of the investments.

I understand and agree with many criticisms of philanthropy. But practically, fortunes have to go somewhere. There are only 3 options: philanthropy, heirs & govt. If not nonprofits, is Peter Thiel's plan to give $10B+/child? I'm more skeptical of that than he is of philanthropy.

I know I go on about this, but comments to all of my posts, both here and on LinkedIn, are no longer worth reading at all due to AI bots. That was not the case a few months ago. (Or rather, bad/crypto comments were obvious, but now it is only meaning-shaped attention vampires)

@buccocapital TCPA prevents robocalls, so I think BDRs will transform to mostly calls. Some pockets of expansion focused BDRs will persist.

Do we really need a human to grade, prospect and reach out to a lead? Seems like an easy win for CRM companies to just generate qualified prospect meetings for your top reps. Can they get their shit together is the only question in my mind

It’s worth thinking through why AI only has true product-market fit for coding and tier one tech support (can maybe argue legal), and who else wins if literally any other business function generates similar traction IMHO, for horizontal roles BDR is probably next

@BradoCapital @stevehou Uber calculate the equilibrium for every ride. Safe to assume driver WTP is lower for long rides that pay a lot, so take rate goes down (there's actual benefits to drivers, like less dead heading).

@stevehou weird because he accepted it right

Uber is going to be disrupted, or at least it should be. It’s making way too much money off of the drivers. I hope they get Citrini-ed.

@scaling01 Honest question - does Anthropic have enough compute capacity to do the LT forecast?

I also did some forecasting of OpenAI and Anthropic revenue. Long live >100 hour time horizons AND >$100B ARR: The exponential results look absolutely insane (probably because they are a bit too bullish) So I asked Opus 4.6 to make its own predictions. But this looks too bearish imo

@ilyasu They generate more revenue per token, so different capacity needs.

If the reported revenue numbers are right, how is Anthropic scaling capacity that fast?

news: OpenAI tops $25B ARR, tho Anthropic narrowing the gap

The reply guys bot situation on Twitter is insanely bad..

@adamhfry I tried really hard to use Atlas - I primairly went back to Chrome because there's no short cut to a classic Google Search UX, which is esp important for Google Maps. And yes, I still think this UX is important.. at least until AGI.

For ChatGPT Atlas, we've been working on landing several major features, including multi-account login, referencing multiple tabs when talking to ChatGPT, Agent mode upgrades, and of course Windows. At the same time, next week we're holding a "Bug Fix + Tech Debt Week" so we don’t lose sight of the smaller issues that often aren’t quite urgent enough to fix immediately. Let us know what should be at the top of the list for us to fix!

@buccocapital $25B of this was embroidered Patagonia sweaters.

Imagine looking at this chart and then thinking building the front-end of the app was the hard part of scaling a multi-sided marketplace

@ErnestWongBWM The other scenario is that AV is not like euv lithography and a few large AV providers catch up in a few years. Waymo no scaling *that* fast. Again, marketplace power isn't just based on fragmented supply, you need to take competitive intensity into account.

@ErnestWongBWM I'd game theory this scenario. Waymo vertically integrates but copycats AVs partner with OEMs to embed their tech, collect data, and "catch up". Consumers may have preferences for AVs and OEMs that drive higher util (eg. multiple networks like Lyft, Uber, etc.). Whats Waymo do?

We studied $UBER and while there is value in the network, ultimately couldn't see how they thrive in an AV world where suppliers get increasingly consolidated and Uber does not own the core technologies Please tell me why I'm wrong.