Hey people! Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your weekly tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.
My first job out of undergrad was in consulting at EY. Right around that time, Don Cheadle was starring in House of Lies, so everyone I talked to thought consulting was flashy and cool, including me.
But then, I started my first project, and I realized I wasn’t a consultant…
…I was a notetaker!
If you’ve worked at a big company, you get it. Taking notes is the sometimes necessary and always painful work given to new folks who can’t yet be trusted to do anything else.
And it’s also a test.
At EY, if you gave a shit about the notes, and you took it seriously, you passed the test. Then you’d get the next test, maybe a status slide or a project tracker. One day, many months later, you might get to lead a client meeting! You get the idea.
Well what the hell does any of this have to do with tech?
Basically, there’s a tech company trying to eliminate note-taking for good, robbing junior employees of their first corporate test.
But that’s not all. They want to be your source of truth. And they want to run your life.
A bit presumptuous, no?
Introducing, The Limitless Pendant.
Yes, the company is named after a Bradley Cooper movie. Yes, the device is named after a piece of jewelry. But rather than (only) being expensive and pretty, this thing actually does something. It can record audio for 100 hours at a time (holy battery life, Batman!). Then, it can transcribe and summarize the work calls you’ve been on, the conversations you’ve had, etc.
You’ll never lose an argument again!
So what’s the catch? Well… while it only costs $100 for the device itself, it’s $20 per month after that (to cover the ongoing cost of the AI-generated summaries/transcripts).
Think of all the spoiled consultants! Now that they don’t have to grind through a 3rd round of revisions on some notes nobody actually cares about… how will they prove themselves!?
A great question for someone else to figure out.
In the meantime, let’s dig into Limitless’ strategy and the three core bets they’re making.
#1 – Go deep, not broad
Rather than risking being average at many things, they want this first version to be outstanding at one thing – recording and summarizing calls. This is an awesome strategy for a few reasons.
First, solving a single problem really well will earn you loyalty from early adopters who need that problem solved. They get excited, tell their friends, and help you evangelize. On the other hand, if you try to do too much at once, you risk nobody getting excited (cough, Humane’s AI Pin, which is getting lambasted by reviewers right now).
Second, narrowing the scope allows you to move faster, so you can be more responsive to customers and to tech advancements. The best hardware companies in the world (think Apple, Samsung) put out new hardware once a year-ish, and their lead time to design those is 3+ years. Think about how long that is… three years ago, nobody had even heard of ChatGPT! Being able to iterate, ride innovation waves, and get customer feedback is critical.
#2 – People will pay for the truth
After passing many note-taking tests, I eventually got a front row seat to see consulting partners closing deals. And do you know what the oft-repeated pitch was that really put a spark into a client’s eyes?
“We can help give you a ‘source of truth’.”
In our case, that meant Oracle or SAP, but it’s a hard problem with many possible solutions. And it feels like every day there are new SaaS tools to address the problem and give teams a trusted source of data. A place they can check and know exactly what’s going on with [blank].
Don’t believe me?!
Asana (for project management)
Salesforce (initially for your sale pipeline/data, and now everything),
Adobe (for your creative assets)
…
You get it.
So for Limitless, giving people notes and summaries of the things they’ve heard can absolutely be a source of truth. And if they can deliver the goods, they can use their status as a trusted source to then go and start “doing things” with that data. Or in other words…
#3 – Data can be a beachhead
Limitless can use their data and access to identify the next biggest problem their customers are facing, and then go tackle that next. (By the way, this is exactly what Oracle, SAP, and those other SaaS apps are doing too… )
But this is where things start to get harder. Why?
“Doing things” with data requires you to change customer behavior or partner with other sources of truth.
Let’s pretend that Limitless wanted to take your conversation with your wife about the grocery list and put that into your iCloud notes or into a Notion list. To do that, Limitless would need to get Apple or Notion to agree to build an integration, so those accounts can be accessed in the background and bada-boom-bada-bing. Grocery list updated.
If you’re Notion, you’re a source of truth. So you absolutely want users on your site as much as possible.
Maybe you don’t mind if Limitless puts new items on the list… but only if that list continues to live in Notion. If Limitless were to grab grocery lists from several apps including you, and over time users start using Limitless instead of Notion, you’re not cool with that! Maybe better to avoid this integration entirely.
So instead, maybe Limitless tries to build their own to do list app. But it’s hard. Apple’s app is really easy to use, users are in the habit of going there first, and Limitless’ version might have some bugs to work out...
Wrapping Up
I think Limitless is right to go deep on one feature, and they’re right to focus first on being a source of truth. But bet #3 is tough – I’m not convinced that they’ll be able to pull it off.
If they were marketing this to enterprises as a secure, productivity-enhancing tool, then that might change things. Enterprises can help put pressure on those other apps (sources of truth) to make them play nicely together. But going direct to consumer makes this challenging.
And on the other hand, given that the consumer hardware alternatives you’ll be competing with to “do things” are the same ones that are world class at shipping hardware (Apple, Samsung), that sounds really daunting too.
All that said, I’m a gadget geek. Even if it doesn’t end up running my life, I’m excited to see this one ship!
Bonus Bullets
Quote of the Week
“In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It's that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept.”
― Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder of AngelList and Airchat
Quick News Reactions
Airchat? — The guy who I used for ‘quote of the week’ re-launched it, and people are going crazy trying to get invited to the beta. Apparently, you record audio and it gets transcribed and posted. Then users can scroll to either read or listen (like TikTok) or comment/respond (like Twitter). I’m curious to try it, but I feel like folks are tired of the churn on social media apps. Twitter as we knew it blew up, and people are still settling in to Threads, X, to Mastodon, etc. This might be bad timing.
All eyes on Japan — If you still had a few open spots on your buzzword bingo card, let me knock them out for you. OpenAI is all-in on Japan, with a new office and a new Japanese language GPT-4 model. Why Japan? Because AI runs on chips, and because a big part of the global chip-making supply chain requires tools and chemicals from Japan.
TikTok Tit for Tat — Instagram was, umm… heavily inspired by TikTok when it created Reels. Now, TikTok is returning the favor, testing their “Notes” photo-sharing app in Australia and Canada. I desperately hope I’m not projecting and missing the boat here, but as I mentioned above about Airchat, I don’t think users want to learn/switch to new social media apps! Again, this feels like bad timing.
PSAs (for the real ones)
If you’re reading this far, you are a legend. Two quick PSAs:
It has come to my attention that we have readers in 44 US states. 44, but not 50! So to fix this, we need to band together. We’re gonna go state-by-state through the stragglers! If Substack’s systems are simply off, and you already have us covered, please reply to let me know (replies only go to me). Otherwise, rack your brain for friends, family, whoever that live there, and share this with them! First up… Nebraska. I’ll keep you posted.
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Overall Economy
This is the Weekly Economic Index published by the Dallas Fed. It’s made up of 10 different data sources from consumer to labor to production, and it’s designed to closely track US GDP.
Tech Jobs Update
Layoffs Since COVID: (Source: Layoffs.FYI).
