My favorite slides (and takeaways) from Benedict Evans “AI is Eating the World” slide deck.
Slide 4 - Tech moves in platform shifts
The amout of wealth that will be created during this platform shift is hard to even comprehend.
I remember living in Sili
As of now, the opportunities are endless for company creation.
Never let a good platform shift go to waste ;) Slide 6 - Platform shifts reset the tech industry
Microsoft went from 95% of computing to 10% in a decade. Microsoft owned computing until the computer moved to your pocket In a blink of an eye, it vanished. This is the cool part if you're building a company during a platform shift, the world is your oyster.
Anything is possible.
Slide 23 - Sam Altman's POV on the future
I think Sam is right that people will buy intelligence like a commodity like electricity. My best guess is they'll pick the cheapest provider that clears a quality bar, the same way you pick an electricity provider. Nobody cares who generates their power. They care that the lights turn on. That's where models are headed. Which means the value shifts entirely to what you build on top of the meter.
Slide 26 - What will equilibrium look like?
This is why I keep saying build the vertical apps. The model layer is turning into a capital-intensive commodity with low margins and no network effects. The application layer, the vertical agent that solves one problem for one industry, that's where the network effects, the margins, and the monopolies re-form. The value is moving up the stack. Build there.
The margin lives with the customer relationship and data.
Slide 27 - Thesis on AI
Chat is terrible UX. Agreed. The labs can't build all the apps. Obviously. Models are commodities with no network effects. Already happening. Which means: innovation moves up the stack. Straight to the founders building real products for real industries on top of commodity intelligence.
Slide 30 - Consumer use is a mile wide and an inch deep
Everyone talks about AI adoption like it's universal (esp on X). This chart says otherwise. Most people use ChatGPT the way they use a calculator. Occasionally. When they remember it exists. The founders who win consumer AI will make products people use daily without realizing they're “using AI.”
Slide 37 - ChatGPT product/market fit
Look at those tiny bars. Legal, support, medical, real estate, finance. Every single one of those is a massive industry spending almost nothing on AI right now. Coding got to $3B because developers adopted first. Every other category is still at the starting line. That's the whole opportunity map in one chart.
Now just go find the sub-niches/vertical use-cases that heavily funded VC companies aren't going after already.
Dare I say... we are so early?
Slide 48 - Startups exist to unbundle use cases
YC gets it. Looks like 85% of its latest batches are AI pilled.
The unbundling of software has begun.
The rush is here.
Slide 54 - Sometimes a job is just a task to be automated
Elevators won't replace us, people who know how to use elevators will?
Elevator attendants were a big contributor to society and then vanished.
History doesn't repeat itself but it certainly rhymes.
Slide 61 - What was impossible that now become cheap?
Benedict is asking the right questions:
What if you had a million interns?
What if you had one intern who was a million times faster?
My big question here is... what businesses does this unlock?
Slide 74 - no one knows anything
The only thing we know is experimenting is the way to do it. Come up with your own ideas, or grab one from Ideabrowser Whatever you do, experimenting a lot is key during platform shifts.
It'll take you experimenting on a few ideas to get to the right one.
And yeah, no one truly knows anything.
The only way out is through.
This is the most incredible time to be building.
Reading through this deck definitely reminded me of that. You can read the full deck here.
