First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years.
Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty.
I run an electrical contractor, so this is not the least bit theoretical to me. The hassle of dealing with local government and PG&E for what should be routine things adds tremendous cost to doing business. Recent concrete example: it cost over $1,000 and two months to process a minor change to an electrical permit set, in Alameda (City). The actual change was moving some panels outside, a small revision to a plan that had already been checked and permitted. This required $1,400 in engineering fees, plus a ~$200 application fee to the City, and then the actual plan check and review charge of $650-700. It was probably one hour of actual work. The worst part was that Alameda outsources its plan check to a third party and I'm pretty sure the plans sat for two weeks on someone's desk at the City, before I asked for status, and then, an hour later, by "complete coincidence", it was sent to the outsourced plan checker.
If we could put a precise price on pollution, it would be a different story. It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.
> It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.
I keep hearing this, but it never happens. Despite attempts to get jurisdictions to race to the bottom, businesses simply follow the money/markets: I can bet you a hefty sum that Alameda will never go without electrical contractors.
> I can bet you a hefty sum that Alameda will never go without electrical contractors.
You *really* don't understand the issue then because no one is saying that there will be 0 electrical contractors.
Electrical contractors will continue to exist because demand will continue to exist, but the wait time to get the work done will increase due to not enough electrical contractors.
Or the work will be left undone because the owner doesn't have enough money to pay the few electrical contractors that remain.
Or the work will occur but will avoid all regulations because the cost of complying relative to the odds of being caught don't justify paying it.
I understand why businesses would want to maximize work done in an area - I hope you're self-aware enough to realize this.
The tension you may be blind to, is that society wants to maximize safety in an area - and any work done should be in service to that goal, and not an end unto itself. We shouldn't blindly maximize for work done in an area, we have to make sure the result is safe: this introduces rules and regulations, and the time and monetary costs tag along.
No two people will agree where the balance is, but generally there's regional culture. Hell, Texas allows home-owners to do their own electrical work - does that "drive business away" since some people won't pay for small DIY fixes in TX? I can't say I've ever heard that argued, but I hear it deployed a lot in response to regulations.
Many states are littered with work environments criss-crossed by extension cords because if it plugs in it doesn't need a permit, forklifts moving IBC totes because that's cheaper than the permitting it would take to install real process equipment and be regulated differently. Rain and snow covered parking and work areas that should have structures over them but can't due to the realities of environmental calculations and permitting.
Every time someone trips on a cord and smashes their face, gets mashed by a forklift, slips and falls on ice and can't work for 6mo, you personally, along with everyone else who's fetish for bureaucracy has driven up the cost of "better solutions" that would've prevented that has a little bit of that blood on their hands.
I'm not saying to just let anyone do a 3ph 480v panel swap and connect that shit to the utility. But at this point that might be better than letting you people continue to run things your way.
It's like saying that a ball-and-chain thing is not going to entirely prevent you from walking, so you're not denied the ability to walk. While technically correct, this conclusion misses a few important related consequences.
Everyone just says F the permits and becomes a youtube academy engineer. Then you start seeing all the issues that the permit system was designed to fix.
Half my house was built less-than-safely by the previous owner because getting the permits for the structures would be too expensive, time-consuming, and maybe not even possible.
The increased costs (time and money) of permits really changes the risk-reward.
Vincent - nice work on this, there's clearly a good kernel of insight here, and I can tell you've been at this a couple years.
I completed a (rather large) contract to reverse-engineer, and eventually rebuild, a hotel chain's property management system from scratch from 2015-2018. We did it all: keycard integration, booking channel sync, credit cards, group bookings, yield management, front-desk GUI, supply management, taking rooms into/out of service, reservation migration from old system to new...you name it, we probably touched it. Dozens of small lessons about the lodging (and broader hospitality i.e. restaurants, country clubs, bars) business domain.
One thing is that hotel = brand (flag) + real estate + operations. You can remix those things in a lot of different ways, e.g. a single ownership group might have two properties on opposite sides of a street, one Hyatt the other Hilton, and they might look different but share staff, or procurement.
The industry's term for brand -- "flag" -- says a lot about how they view Hilton/Hyatt. They come and go, even if the staff running the property stays the same. The main reason hotels choose to flag vs. stay independent, is access to the chain's booking flow.
One of the more interesting consequences of this setup, is that small, independent hotels, are kind of a shit show in terms of technology. Chains generally require a lot of standardization of their member properties, including what software they run to manage the property. Many properties that don't affiliate with a chain don't have any property management system at all. It's basically 10-20 rooms run directly off the moral equivalent of an Excel sheet at the front desk. And why wouldn't it be--small boutique hotels often gross $1-2 million/year; there isn't budget for expensive enterprise software, or maybe more critically, the people who know how to deploy and operate it.
A significant value-add of Expedia and booking.com, especially with independent properties, is getting the supply (hotel) side of the market organized. Many of these hotels outsource their entire reservation tracking system to a single channel (e.g. booking.com) because trying to keep track of bookings across phone, direct web, Expedia, booking.com, and others, is just too hard without specialist software that requires more IT muscle to deploy than a single non-chain hotel can muster.
I mention this because I go to church every Sunday and was thinking about how much real estate churches have (event halls) that sit unused, and what a schlep it would be -- although good for everyone -- to expose the collective supply of the world's churches, HOAs, park districts, and other nonprofits, to the kind of events you're trying to do. It would indeed be a tremendous pain in the ass to get all the physical access (keys), contract terms, payment systems, availability, etc ironed out, but it's a massively underused class of real estate and many of these organizations could really use the cash.
Thanks a lot for this insight. Genuinely appreciate you taking the time to help me.
I 100% agree, the interface is the least interesting part. Anyone can build a chat UI. That’s not the moat.
What matters is the messy stuff in the backend. Vendors. Hotels. Quotes that change. Someone forgetting to update availability. Contracts. Deposits. Random edge cases. That coordination layer is the real product.
The UI is just the tip. The hard part is keeping state across dozens of moving pieces and async back-and-forth.
My belief is that AI finally makes some of this operational glue automatable. Not in a magical way. But in a very practical loop:
ask → get info → update plan → trigger action → wait → adjust → repeat
Planning is basically structured ping-pong. It’s not search. It’s evolving constraints over time. That’s why it feels agent-shaped.
What I am basically saying is : Event planning is really AI agent prone and very conversation prone, that is why this kind of interface will take over travel and event planning. It is like you have a personal travel agent sitting next to you and it showing you options.
Totally agree with you though. organizing fragmented supply is the hard, unsexy, painful work. That’s where the real value is built.
It starts with framing the CIA as a neutral entity, which it is not. It's a form of metapropaganda, in which a propaganda outlet characterizes itself as a neutral provider of information.
One example that comes to mind is Patrice Lumumba's assassination, allegedly authorized by the American government. There is no mention to Lumumba's government that started in 1960.
Venezuela's entry has the same issue pointed out in the DPRK's - the negative impact of sanctions imposed by the US on the economy is not mentioned, and is described as "chaotic economy due to political corruption".
Hard agree with both points--this feels way closer to reality than most of what I've read.
On recession: cost of living is becoming crisis-level. I read recently that 67% of Americans are paycheck-to-paycheck. 150k/yr is 12k/month. If groceries go from 500 to 1000/month, a 150k wage-earner save less for retirement. For someone making 30-40k (basically minimum wage), it's a huge hit. Then consider it's the same story for cars, housing, medical care...it goes on and on. It doesn't look "recessionary" because GDP keeps going up. But we're getting so much less for it with every passing year.
I also agree that we need to consider what brownfield dev looks like. It's where the vast majority of my time has gone over 15+ years in software and I'm not convinced all the coordination / sequencing / thinking will be assisted with LLMs. Particularly because they aren't trained on large proprietary codebases.
What we might both be missing, is that for most people, writing the actual code is hard. LLMs help with that a lot. That's what a lot of junior/entry-level work, actually is (not as much planning/thinking as seniors do).
Short sellers are built on their reputation, and Hindenburg has a lot of that. Even if you fired the people, you'd keep the name.
That said, it would be wrong to automatically assume that they try to maximize gains; at this point, it's likely most of the team has enough money to retire, and at that point, making even more might not be their primary goal.
And in that same vein it makes sense not to sell because if they ever see another great idea 5-10 years down the line I'd assume they might want to get back together under the same name and publish again. Selling would preclude them from doing that under the same name.
I tried to automate a big chunk of property management (mostly commercial) over the past few years. The main thing I realized is that it's mostly a people business, and AI (or computers generally) are never going to stand over a vendor's shoulder and keep them honest (e.g. make sure they sweep up or don't scuff the walls), or have a difficult conversation about late rent with a tenant, or show up after hours when a pipe breaks, if only to show face with a tenant.
There are definitely workflow and process elements that can be automated. But if wealth management is any indication, there are a lot of people willing to pay a premium for having a person involved. Not sure why real estate would be different.
The wildcard in all this is the NAR court decision. If buyers have to pay for their own representation, that might make them shop around a little more.
I think people are constantly changing their comfort zones when they fall in love with different products.
People definitely would be open to real estate w/ software. Otherwise, by this logic, why do people use Zillow? Why don't they just drive to their local Relator office to ask about local listings? How could you trust an online algorithm to show homes instead of someone describing homes to your face?
We are seeing that the fraction of home buyers that sign with the first buyer the meet is declining - more opportunity for us!
> People definitely would be open to real estate w/ software. Otherwise, by this logic, why do people use Zillow? Why don't they just drive to their local Relator office to ask about local listings? How could you trust an online algorithm to show homes instead of someone describing homes to your face?
Actually why not both? People check Zillow for a ballpark, or end up finding an actual place, and then book a tour through a local agent at Zillow (who might suggest other places too).
Your product seems like a replacement for Zillow, with a conversational touch. I can see a scope for its use, but not sure how it's a moat. The moat here is the database of homes and the local agents network that Zillow uses.
I think these aren't more popular because actually, there are things that genuinely suck about small business ownership. Offhand: stress, uncertainty/having to make payroll, having a significant % of your net worth tied up in a single, undiversified investment that's near-impossible to sell.
Given the choice, I think a normal cash-paying salary job (maybe with bonus) is vastly preferable to most people.
A perspective I've found helpful is to think about a fund as a business, which it is.
Let's assume a hypothetical case of running a $100 million tech investment fund. The first 10-11% of return should go straight to investors (not the manager), for the simple reason that 7-8% is available in the stock market, and unlike the public markets, tech funds are illiquid--unlike investing in SPY, you can't wake up one day and trade out of your interest in a fund like this. You're locked in. That shifts the return expectation upward.
So assuming the manager's cost of equity (what investors demand) is around 10-11%, maybe a great manager can get the return number to 15-16%. That's a pretty good return on the fund but it's only $5 million in absolute gross returns (10->15% on $100 million). Considering the manager might get only 10-20% of this (the rest goes to investors), it's just a lot of work to earn $1 million in performance-based comp, over 2-3 years of active work and perhaps a decade of full fund life. These things are also typically run by teams (several partners) so the returns are split.
The point is that $100 million funds just aren't making their managers rich. The two outcomes of this, which you see over and over, are (1) for managers to try to manage much bigger funds ($500+ million) or (2) big management fees of 2%/year or more, which significantly erode returns.
The net result being, VC is a very hard business that almost always delivers substandard returns to its investors, after long lock-ins with very little liquidity. It's very tough and I'm not surprised to see these guys shutting down.
First: we may have gone too far toward anti-pollution. China has more naval vessels than the US. Everything changes when peace isn't a foregone conclusion, as it has been for the past 30? 50? years.
Second: it's not the regulations per se, but the difficulty of dealing with the bureaucracy, particularly (a) long delays and (b) uncertainty.
I run an electrical contractor, so this is not the least bit theoretical to me. The hassle of dealing with local government and PG&E for what should be routine things adds tremendous cost to doing business. Recent concrete example: it cost over $1,000 and two months to process a minor change to an electrical permit set, in Alameda (City). The actual change was moving some panels outside, a small revision to a plan that had already been checked and permitted. This required $1,400 in engineering fees, plus a ~$200 application fee to the City, and then the actual plan check and review charge of $650-700. It was probably one hour of actual work. The worst part was that Alameda outsources its plan check to a third party and I'm pretty sure the plans sat for two weeks on someone's desk at the City, before I asked for status, and then, an hour later, by "complete coincidence", it was sent to the outsourced plan checker.
If we could put a precise price on pollution, it would be a different story. It's a collateral damage of all the (even well-intentioned, good) regulation that drives business away.