Porridge ai

The current AI boom reminds me of the dotcom boom in the 1990’s. There are certainly many parallels and lessons to be learnt.

This post examines these similarities and how it relates to the wildly successful and valuable http://www.porridge-ai.com startup.

The dotcom boom

If you don’t know what the dotcom boom is, find an old person and ask them…

Otherwise, you could read one of thousands of MBA theses about the dotcom boom, along with studies of Kodak & Nokia. Simply, it goes like this:

in the early days of the internet (circa 1995) there was a mania for anything internet related
equity markets, valuations & venture capitalists went bonkers
virtually everyone had an internet ‘dotcom’ startup
it all inevitably came crashing down, with only a few survivors

porridge.com

Let’s say you aspired to porridge billionairedom- you’d need:

a catchy domain name, like http://www.porridge.com
some attractive, intelligent & eloquent people with a stake in the company.
they just had to talk shit (but convincingly enough) to separate investors from their money
a PhD or two (porridge experts) to lend credibility, even if no-one understood what they did, or what on earth they were talking about
investors who were desperate to get in on the dotcom action
the best porridge website on the internet (maybe the only one..)
ability to convince yourself of the certain success of a porridge business

Having completed this: take the company public and retire at 30

Revenue or customers didn’t matter- it would all work out somehow……
Or at least it would be good fun until the investors’ money ran out.

The fact that Jock McTaggart’s clan had been making pretty good porridge for hundreds of years and still weren’t billionaires wasn’t important.

There were plenty of dire predictions: ‘bricks & mortar’ retailers would vanish, all McTaggarts would lose their jobs and everyone else would become automatons sitting in front of computers.

The result

> Companies went from billion dollar valuations to zero.
> Some people pocketed a lot of cash with well-timed exits.
> Others lost everything.

What happened ?

Despite this boom and bust, it goes without saying that the world changed significantly, just not quite how we expected:

the internet became a natural, intrinsic part of life
the wildly optimistic dreams of dotcom startups seemed ridiculous in hindsight
dire predictions of internet-based dystopia fizzled out
business success came back to fundamentals: having a good domain name wasn’t enough
every business became a ‘dotcom’ in one way or another

The last bastion seems to be voting- for some reason we entrust our life savings or most intimate liaisons to the internet, but not a ballot paper. However, let’s not go there…

What can we learn?

I’d be stating the obvious explaining similarities to the current AI boom.
But the conclusions I make are:

AI will become a natural part of our lives
everyone will need to know AI to some degree, like knowing how to use the internet
roles like ‘AI engineer’ will not exist (if you are an engineer, you understand AI)
the dire predictions will fade: we will wonder what all the fuss was about
company valuations will return to sanity: based on true value and real profits
many of the AI companies that we now think are a sure bet will vanish
the stuff we now think is impressive will seem pointless
(current breed of massive, power hungry LLMs will be seen as a piledriver to crack a nut)
branding products as ‘AI’ will become passé: sorry http://www.porridge-ai.com
however, the strong AI companies from today will survive to be powerhouses of the future