A Few Things: Galloway on the Future, Saudi and Sports, Hyper Individualisation, 4K Weeks on Peter Attita, Kuppy on Markets & Inflation, Meta's Chatbots, Future of Manufacturing, News You Missed....

August 15, 2023

Hi, I’m Ahmed Husain, founder of A Few Things. Every week, I share my view on developments across markets, technology and being a better human. I advise and work with global family offices and investors looking to understand the world and find investment opportunities.

I am sharing this weekly email with you because I count you in the group of people I learn from and enjoy being around. This week’s email is a little short since I’m in the Scottish Highlands with family.

You can check out last week’s edition here: The Future of Net Zero, Marko Papic's Latest,Le Shrub on Hidden Forces, Grain Brain, What I Learned About Investing from Darwin, Superconductor 101....

Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you enjoyed this, don’t be shy.

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Quotes I Am Thinking About:

 “After a while, determination starts to look like talent."

- Paul Graham

"I don’t like working. I do the absolute minimum necessary to reach a decision. There are people who love working. They amass an inordinate amount of information, much more than is necessary to reach a conclusion. They become attached to certain investments..because they know them intimately. I am different. I concentrate on the essentials."

- George Soros

“Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.”

- Robert J. Sawyer

"Raise your sights. Compete with the immortals."

- David Ogilvy

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A. A Few Things Worth Checking Out:

1. The always entertaining Scott Galloway did a little talk about Provocative Predictions for the Future.

2. Saudi Arabia's foremost football competition, the Saudi Pro League, is set to commence on August 11th for the 2023-24 season. Last season's attendance figures were modest, with an average of 9,300 fans per game. However, a significant transformation is underway this season.

Al Ittihad, led by Abderrazak Hamdallah, has secured prominent players such as Karim Benzema and N'Golo Kante. Notably, Cristiano Ronaldo has joined Al Nassr, along with other notable names, propelling Saudi clubs into the upper echelons of global football spending, having invested over $480 million.

This expansion into sports is part of Saudi Arabia's broader strategy, led by Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, to modernize and improve the nation's image globally. While some critics label this as "sportswashing," Saudi officials maintain it is a genuine effort to showcase progress and culture. The initiative involves substantial investments from entities like the Public Investment Fund and Saudi Aramco, totaling more than $10 billion.

This Economist article goes into detail.

3. This substack by Inevitability Research on Hyper Individualisation had me thinking. It discusses the emergence of a trend where individuals are increasingly focused on personalisation and tailoring every aspect of their lives to their preferences and desires.

The big idea: Trends like personal branding, AI-driven personalisation, and the desire for individualised experiences are shaping various aspects of society, including consumer behaviour, industries, and the nature of shared realities. The piece then contemplates the potential benefits, challenges, and implications of a hyper-individualised future.

Some of the drivers of this trend:

• Wealth Transfer and Generational Impact: Millennials and Gen Z are set to inherit significant wealth, which could impact their consumption habits and preferences.

• Blurring of Content Creator and Consumer: The blurring boundary between content creators and consumers, facilitated by social media platforms and smartphones.

• AI and Personalisation: The role of artificial intelligence in enabling personalised experiences is explored.

• Entrepreneurship and Status: Entrepreneurship and the pursuit of being one's own boss have become status symbols.

• Shared Reality and Personalisation: As people tailor their lives to their individual preferences, there might be a reduction in a shared sense of reality or common experiences.

4. I’ve spoken about Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman many times in the last few years. He was on the Peter Attia podcast this week discussing time, productivity and purpose.

5. This was a truly unreal piece about Goldman Sachs and David Solomon it’s CEO!

6. In July I hosted an investor lunch with a Family Offices and my friend Harris “Kuppy” Kupperman. This twitter post was a great summary of Kuppy’s latest thinking on markets and this piece on playing inflation is a good read.

7. How Money Laundering Actually Works. This was an interesting video by Robert Mazur, an undercover federal agent who worked as a money launderer for some of the largest drug cartels in South America. 

In the video, he gives a detailed and clear explanation of how cartels clean their money and how he won their trust. 

If you enjoyed Ozark as much as I did, you'll like this real-life.

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B. Charts and News You Might Have Missed:

1. Voice memos are increasing in popularity, especially among millennials and Gen Z.

The trend of sending audio notes may be a byproduct of the simultaneous boom in podcasting, possibly making the most authentic form of digital communication something routinely done on the go.

WhatsApp reported users sent over 7 billion voice messages just last year. Hinge said users have increased voice messaging by 37% compared to 2022. Slack users send 1.46 million voice messages per week.

A Vox/YouGov poll found 30% of respondents communicate via voice note “weekly, daily, or multiple times a day,” while 43% between 18 and 29 say they do so at least weekly.

People can get a sense of someone’s emotional state right away (via their pitch, speed, and intonation), send messages while doing other tasks, and feel more authentic and intimate to listeners (which is important for maintaining long-distance friendships).

2. Novo’s Wegovy has shown to lower patients’ risk of heart attacks by 20%; meanwhile, insurance companies are growing increasingly desperate to shut down the weight-loss drugs as they are determined to maintain their system of making more profits over time by treating rather than preventing disease.

Imagine a world where humans collectively weigh ten to twenty billion pounds less.

The biggest overlooked benefit might be going from undersupply to oversupply of doctors and nurses.

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C. The Technology Section:

1. Recent developments and rumours suggest that Meta could be a significant contender in the race to develop advanced AI companions, akin to the concept portrayed in the movie "Her."

Despite strong competition from companies like Google, Microsoft, and various AI-focused startups, Meta's initiatives, including their LLM Llama project and rumored chatbot development for social media apps, indicate their potential in this arena. With billions of users already engaged in app-based conversations on Meta's platforms, the company possesses a natural advantage for launching an AI companion chatbot, potentially surpassing traditional web search.

Meta's success in this field, against competitors like Google and Microsoft, hinges on two key factors: providing users with the most advantageous outcomes and attracting a significant developer community.

2. The Economist had a good piece titled: If it can be designed on a computer, it can be built by robots. Powerful new software rewrites the rule of mass production

Software-driven manufacturing model resembles the semiconductor industry's approach, where design and fabrication are closely integrated through software.

Traditionally, the design process involves collaboration between designers and manufacturers, often leading to uncertainty and iterations. However, software-defined manufacturing changes this paradigm. Designers create products with confidence, knowing that production constraints are encoded in their CAD programs, linked directly to the factory's machines. This approach, successful in the semiconductor industry, is now extending to other sectors like metal component production.

Software-defined manufacturing offers advantages in terms of efficiency, cost savings, and reshoring production.

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Believe it or not, that “♡ Like” button is a big deal – it serves as a proxy to new visitors of this publication’s value. If you enjoyed this, don’t be shy.