Vision Pro is a Hit

You didn't hear it here first but Apple's Vision Pro is a hit.

Some wonderful essays in this week's newsletter. I lead with Jeff Becker's look at venture capital, focusing on who the customer is. The question "Who is the customer?" is crucial for any product. The answer is easy when the product is an asset class - the customer is the person investing money. Yet most of the venture world pretends that the customer is the entrepreneur. In reality, the entrepreneur is a supplier. She or He supplies opportunity, commitment, and execution; the goal is to grow value by investing customer cash into that supply.

Now it is easy to understand why venture investors sometimes describe the recipient of funding as the customer. It is important that the company feels served by the VC. But serving an investee company is clearly a mission carried out for the VC fund investors, the real customer.

Jeff is addressing a real problem - how to best invest in the supply. I will leave you to read his essay and ponder it, but he proposes a radical re-think of how to do early-stage investing, and for the most part, it argues for a more liberal spread of cash, in larger numbers, to far more founders. It's interesting, to say the least.

Evan Shapiro focuses on the rapid aging of the US population. He makes a strong case:

Since 2019, America's population has grown by 7.8 million. Yet, the US now has 2.7 million fewer kids under 15 than it did in 2019. Meanwhile, there are now 7.1 million more Americans 65-80 than five years ago. America now has half a million fewer people under 40 than it did in 2019 and almost 8.4 million more people over 40.

At a time when politicians from both sides are falling over themselves to point a finger at immigration as a major problem, it is refreshing to see analysis demonstrating that the US needs more immigrants. And in a context where there is virtual full employment this needs to be across all skill levels and needs to trend young. The essay is great.

Part of the anti-immigrant narrative has focused on DACA - Consideration of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Ron Conway is part of a group of over 50 businesses signing an amicus brief to support DACA. Bravo to him.

Hostility to immigrants is never OK. It is even less OK when the economy is desperate for skilled and unskilled willing hands.

Politically inspired propaganda dominated elsewhere this week. Amazon was prevented from closing the acquisition of iRobot due to EU objections based on competitive concerns. Well done, EU. Amazon dropped the deal, and iRobot may well be in trouble as a result. Thirty percent of staff were laid off. And more EU interference when Apple was ordered to allow alternative app stores on the iPhone. Steven Sinofsky's wonderful essay, "Building Under Regulation," leverages his vast experience at Microsoft. It seems every day it becomes more obvious that the EU is against innovation, especially when it produces successful big companies.

The Congress got in on the act too (see X of the Week), calling social media leaders to DC to be accused, show-trial-like, of being responsible for teen suicides. Sadly, the Meta CEO apologized as if admitting culpability.

Teen suicide and causality is a non-trivial issue, but it is fair to say that Social Media does not cause it. Teens (I have one and another two recently in their post-teen phase). All have had growing up challenges. As I recall, I did also. The world can be harsh in the face of those challenges. But to see social media as the only factor, or even a major one, seems superficial and plain wrong. I wish one of the executives had the nerve to push back against the accusations. Adam Lashinsky's piece is interesting.

Finally, Chris Heuer has a research piece on AI and the Future of Work. Well done, Chris, this is such an important issue. My PoV is that work, defined as paid labor, will inevitably decline and the average working day will decline. I believe this is a fundamental good for humanity. I also believe it poses enormous global questions about how the abundance made possible will be distributed to improve life for everybody. I do. not think this is the end of human effort. Just the beginning of the end of the need to do paid labor in order to live.

Essays of the Week