Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Billions of dollars gone!
|
Unless you live in a rabbit hole, you know what recently happened with OpenAI. Yes, the company that created the famous, beloved, and vilified ChatGPT. Well… a Chinese company unexpectedly emerged with its own AI, Deepseek, which has shaken up the market and the industry. It offers the equivalent of the most advanced ChatGPT model but it’s free—at least for now. And not only that, Deepseek made its code open-source, making it accessible to anyone who wants to use or improve it. You’ll be able to do much more with less. How do you feel about? Still no bells… Well.. after the announcement, nearly all major tech companies saw their stock prices plummet. Nvidia, for example, the company that manufactures the chips used to build and train AI models, lost nearly $600 billion in market value in a single day. And this is the most important lesson hidden in this situation: Even the biggest, most famous, and wealthiest company can fall overnight. Even if it was the first to market. Not because they’re doing anything wrong. Simply because the moment your offering becomes a standardized product, a commodity within everyone's reach... You’re destined to be overtaken by a competitor sooner or later. There will always be someone who can commoditize your product even further, lower the price (or eliminate it entirely), and offer the same features as you. And this will happen to your company, or to you. Yes, to you. As a worker, as a professional… if you don’t keep evolving, improving, learning and getting far away of being a commodity… sooner or later… you’ll lose. Do you want to know anything different today? Here you are my pick.
PD 1: If you liked this email, don't keep it in secret and forward it to a friend. They will thank you enormously one day. PD 2: If somebody has sent you this email and you want to receive emails like this yourself, visit vicentevalencia.com PD 3: If you want unsubscribe, click the link below. |
Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Every crossing of a street, I tell my four-year-old son: “Check both sides before crossing.” He normally looks at it for two seconds and says: “Done.” This is not quality assurance. It is confidence. A simple process. One person does the work. Another person verifies it. Apparently, this governance innovation had not yet reached Edinburgh, in the “Ununited Kingdom”. In 2001, the City entered into a 30-year PPP to deliver and maintain a group of new and refurbished schools. Seventeen of them....
I’m a PPP freak. You know… I heard in the news that Ghana will keep 70% of the toll revenue. Excellent. Seventy per cent is a very impressive number. Particularly before anyone asks: Seventy per cent of what? Ghana’s Parliament recently approved a 20-year PPP to introduce electronic tolling across 66 locations. The Government receives 70% of gross toll revenue. The concessionaire receives 30%. Great for a press release, some pictures and ceremonial pats in the back. Percentages are seductive....
1993. Argentina, the losers of the last World Cup. They are pros in Economics. This is why they signed a 30-year PPP with a nine-year business plan. What can get wrong? Nobody knew it was nine years. That was the problem. Or at least, one of them. The project was Aguas Argentinas. At the time, it was the largest water concession in the world. You know… Argentinos tend to exaggerate… a little bit… specially in front of the referee… More than eight million customers. Thirty years. Serious...