Tech Deciphered

Bertrand Schmitt & Nuno G. Pedro
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Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. To understand what’s really happening behind the surface, join our hosts, Nuno Goncalves Pedro, investor, co-founder and managing partner at Strive Capital, and Bertrand Schmitt, entrepreneur, co-Founder & Chairman at App Annie. They have been each in tech for almost 25 years, are now based in Silicon Valley, having both previously worked and lived in Europe and Asia. With Tech DECIPHERED, discover how the best entrepreneurs pitch, how investors think, and what are the deep trends underlying the tech industry. To learn more about Tech DECIPHERED, head over to www.decipheredshow.com for more info about the podcast, show notes, resources and complete transcripts.

  1. قبل يوم واحد

    73 – Infrastructure… The Rebirth

    Infrastructure was passé…uncool. Difficult to get dollars from Private Equity and Growth funds, and almost impossible to get a VC fund interested. Now?! Now, it’s cool. Infrastructure seems to be having a Renaissance, a full on Rebirth, not just fueled by commercial interests (e.g. advent of AI), but also by industrial policy and geopolitical considerations. In this episode of Tech Deciphered, we explore what’s cool in the infrastructure spaces, including mega trends in semiconductors, energy, networking & connectivity, manufacturing Navigation: Intro We’re back to building things Why now: the 5 forces behind the renaissance Semiconductors: compute is the new oil Networking & connectivity: digital highways get rebuilt Energy: rebuilding the power stack (not just renewables) Manufacturing: the return of “atoms + bits” Wrap: what it means for startups, incumbents, and investors Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Introduction Welcome to episode 73 of Tech Deciphered, Infrastructure, the Rebirth or Renaissance. Infrastructure was passé, it wasn’t cool, but all of a sudden now everyone’s talking about network, talking about compute and semiconductors, talking about logistics, talking about energy. What gives? What’s happened? It was impossible in the past to get any funds, venture capital, even, to be honest, some private equity funds or growth funds interested in some of these areas, but now all of a sudden everyone thinks it’s cool. The infrastructure seems to be having a renaissance, a full-on rebirth. In this episode, we will explore in which cool ways the infrastructure spaces are moving and what’s leading to it. We will deep dive into the forces that are leading us to this. We will deep dive into semiconductors, networking and connectivity, energy, manufacturing, and then we’ll wrap up. Bertrand, so infrastructure is cool now. Bertrand Schmitt We’re back to building things Yes. I thought software was going to eat the world. I cannot believe it was then, maybe even 15 years ago, from Andreessen, that quote about software eating the world. I guess it’s an eternal balance. Sometimes you go ahead of yourself, you build a lot of software stack, and at some point, you need the hardware to run this software stack, and there is only so much the bits can do in a world of atoms. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Obviously, we’ve gone through some of this before. I think what we’re going through right now is AI is eating the world, and because AI is eating the world, it’s driving a lot of this infrastructure building that we need. We don’t have enough energy to be consumed by all these big data centers and hyperscalers. We need to be innovative around network as well because of the consumption in terms of network bandwidth that is linked to that consumption as well. In some ways, it’s not software eating the world, AI is eating the world. Because AI is eating the world, we need to rethink everything around infrastructure and infrastructure becoming cool again. Bertrand Schmitt There is something deeper in this. It’s that the past 10, even 15 years were all about SaaS before AI. SaaS, interestingly enough, was very energy-efficient. When I say SaaS, I mean cloud computing at large. What I mean by energy-efficient is that actually cloud computing help make energy use more efficient because instead of companies having their own separate data centers in many locations, sometimes poorly run from an industrial perspective, replace their own privately run data center with data center run by the super scalers, the hyperscalers of the world. These data centers were run much better in terms of how you manage the coolings, the energy efficiency, the rack density, all of this stuff. Actually, the cloud revolution didn’t increase the use of electricity. The cloud revolution was actually a replacement from your private data center to the hyperscaler data center, which was energy efficient. That’s why we didn’t, even if we are always talking about that growth of cloud computing, we were never feeling the pinch in term of electricity. As you say, we say it all changed because with AI, it was not a simple “Replacement” of locally run infrastructure to a hyperscaler run infrastructure. It was truly adding on top of an existing infrastructure, a new computing infrastructure in a way out of nowhere. Not just any computing infrastructure, an energy infrastructure that was really, really voracious in term of energy use. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro There was one other effect. Obviously, we’ve discussed before, we are in a bubble. We won’t go too much into that today. But the previous big bubble in tech, which is in the late ’90s, there was a lot of infrastructure built. We thought the internet was going to take over back then. It didn’t take over immediately, but there was a lot of network connectivity, bandwidth built back in the day. Companies imploded because of that as well, or had to restructure and go in their chapter 11. A lot of the big telco companies had their own issues back then, etc., but a lot of infrastructure was built back then for this advent of the internet, which would then take a long time to come. In some ways, to your point, there was a lot of latent supply that was built that was around that for a while wasn’t used, but then it was. Now it’s been used, and now we need new stuff. That’s why I feel now we’re having the new moment of infrastructure, new moment of moving forward, aligned a little bit with what you just said around cloud computing and the advent of SaaS, but also around the fact that we had a lot of buildup back in the late ’90s, early ’90s, which we’re now still reaping the benefits on in today’s world. Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, that’s actually a great point because what was built in the late ’90s, there was a lot of fibre that was built. Laying out the fibre either across countries, inside countries. This fibre, interestingly enough, you could just change the computing on both sides of the fibre, the routing, the modems, and upgrade the capacity of the fibre. But the fibre was the same in between. The big investment, CapEx investment, was really lying down that fibre, but then you could really upgrade easily. Even if both ends of the fibre were either using very old infrastructure from the ’90s or were actually dark and not being put to use, step by step, it was being put to use, equipment was replaced, and step by step, you could keep using more and more of this fibre. It was a very interesting development, as you say, because it could be expanded over the years, where if we talk about GPUs, use for AI, GPUs, the interesting part is actually it’s totally the opposite. After a few years, it’s useless. Some like Google, will argue that they can depreciate over 5, 6 years, even some GPUs. But at the end of the day, the difference in perf and energy efficiency of the GPUs means that if you are energy constrained, you just want to replace the old one even as young as three-year-old. You have to look at Nvidia increasing spec, generation after generation. It’s pretty insane. It’s usually at least 3X year over year in term of performance. Nuno Gonçalves Pedro At this moment in time, it’s very clear that it’s happening. Why now: the 5 forces behind the renaissance Maybe let’s deep dive into why it’s happening now. What are the key forces around this? We’ve identified, I think, five forces that are particularly vital that lead to the world we’re in right now. One we’ve already talked about, which is AI, the demand shock and everything that’s happened because of AI. Data centers drive power demand, drive grid upgrades, drive innovative ways of getting energy, drive chips, drive networking, drive cooling, drive manufacturing, drive all the things that we’re going to talk in just a bit. One second element that we could probably highlight in terms of the forces that are behind this is obviously where we are in terms of cost curves around technology. Obviously, a lot of things are becoming much cheaper. The simulation of physical behaviours has become a lot more cheap, which in itself, this becomes almost a vicious cycle in of itself, then drives the adoption of more and more AI and stuff. But anyway, the simulation is becoming more and more accessible, so you can do a lot of simulation with digital twins and other things off the real world before you go into the real world. Robotics itself is becoming, obviously, cheaper. Hardware, a lot of the hardware is becoming cheaper. Computer has become cheaper as well. Obviously, there’s a lot of cost curves that have aligned that, and that’s maybe the second force that I would highlight. Obviously, funds are catching up. We’ll leave that a little bit to the end. We’ll do a wrap-up and talk a little bit about the implications to investors. But there’s a lot of capital out there, some capital related to industrial policy, other capital related to private initiative, private equity, growth funds, even venture capital, to be honest, and a few other elements on that. That would be a third force that I would highlight. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Interestingly enough, in terms of capital use, and we’ll talk more about this, but some firms, if we are talking about energy investment, it wa

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  2. ١٨ يناير

    72 – Our Children’s Future

    IWhat is our children’s future? What skills should they be developing? How should schools be adapting? What will the fully functioning citizens and workers of the future look like? A look into the landscape of the next 15 years, the future of work with human and AI interactions, the transformation of education, the safety and privacy landscapes, and a parental playbook. Navigation: Intro The Landscape: 2026–2040 The Future of Work: Human + AI The Transformation of Education The Ethics, Safety, and Privacy Landscape The Parental Playbook: Actionable Strategies Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Schmitt Introduction Welcome to Episode 72 of Tech Deciphered, about our children’s future. What is our children’s future? What skills should they be developing? How should school be adapting to AI? What would be the functioning citizens and workers of the future look like, especially in the context of the AI revolution? Nuno, what’s your take? Maybe we start with the landscape. Nuno Goncalves Pedro The Landscape: 2026–2040 Let’s first frame it. What do people think is going to happen? Firstly, that there’s going to be a dramatic increase in productivity, and because of that dramatic increase in productivity, there are a lot of numbers that show that there’s going to be… AI will enable some labour productivity growth of 0.1 to 0.6% through 2040, which would be a figure that would be potentially rising even more depending on use of other technologies beyond generative AI, as much as 0.5 to 3.4% points annually, which would be ridiculous in terms of productivity enhancement. To be clear, we haven’t seen it yet. But if there are those dramatic increases in productivity expected by the market, then there will be job displacement. There will be people losing their jobs. There will be people that will need to be reskilled, and there will be a big shift that is similar to what happens when there’s a significant industrial revolution, like the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century into the 20th century. Other numbers quoted would say that 30% of US jobs could be automated by 2030, which is a silly number, 30%, and that another 60% would see tremendously being altered. A lot of their tasks would be altered for those jobs. There’s also views that this is obviously fundamentally a global phenomenon, that as much as 9% of jobs could be lost to AI by 2030. I think question mark if this is a net number or a gross number, so it might be 9% our loss, but then maybe there’re other jobs that will emerge. It’s very clear that the landscape we have ahead of us is if there are any significant increases in productivity, there will be job displacement. There will be job shifting. There will be the need for reskilling. Therefore, I think on the downside, you would say there’s going to be job losses. We’ll have to reevaluate whether people should still work in general 5 days a week or not. Will we actually work in 10, 20, 30 years? I think that’s the doomsday scenario and what happens on that side of the fence. I think on the positive side, there’s also a discussion around there’ll be new jobs that emerge. There’ll be new jobs that maybe we don’t understand today, new job descriptions that actually don’t even exist yet that will emerge out this brave new world of AI. Bertrand Schmitt Yeah. I mean, let’s not forget how we get to a growing economy. I mean, there’s a measurement of a growing economy is GDP growth. Typically, you can simplify in two elements. One is the growth of the labour force, two, the rise of the productivity of that labour force, and that’s about it. Either you grow the economy by increasing the number of people, which in most of the Western world is not really happening, or you increase productivity. I think that we should not forget that growth of productivity is a backbone of growth for our economies, and that has been what has enabled the rise in prosperity across countries. I always take that as a win, personally. That growth in productivity has happened over the past decades through all the technological revolutions, from more efficient factories to oil and gas to computers, to network computers, to internet, to mobile and all the improvement in science, usually on the back of technological improvement. Personally, I welcome any rise in improvement we can get in productivity because there is at this stage simply no other choice for a growing world in terms of growing prosperity. In terms of change, we can already have a look at the past. There are so many jobs today you could not imagine they would exist 30 years ago. Take the rise of the influencer, for instance, who could have imagined that 30 years ago. Take the rise of the small mom-and-pop e-commerce owner, who could have imagined that. Of course, all the rise of IT as a profession. I mean, how few of us were there 30 years ago compared to today. I mean, this is what it was 30 years ago. I think there is a lot of change that already happened. I think as a society, we need to welcome that. If we go back even longer, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, let’s not forget, if I take a city like Paris, we used to have tens of thousands of people transporting water manually. Before we have running water in every home, we used to have boats going to the North Pole or to the northern region to bring back ice and basically pushing ice all the way to the Western world because we didn’t have fridges at the time. I think that when we look back in time about all the jobs that got displaced, I would say, Thank you. Thank you because these were not such easy jobs. Change is coming, but change is part of the human equation, at least. Industrial revolution, the past 250 years, it’s thanks to that that we have some improvement in living conditions everywhere. AI is changing stuff, but change is a constant, and we need to adapt and adjust. At least on my side, I’m glad that AI will be able to displace some jobs that were not so interesting to do in the first place in many situations. Maybe not dangerous like in the past because we are talking about replacing white job collars, but at least repetitive jobs are definitely going to be on the chopping block. Nuno Goncalves Pedro What happens in terms of shift? We were talking about some numbers earlier. The World Economic Forum also has some numbers that predicts that there is a gross job creation rate of 14% from 2025 to 2030 and a displacement rate of 8%, so I guess they’re being optimistic, so a net growth in employment. I think that optimism relates to this thesis that, for example, efficiency, in particular in production and industrial environments, et cetera, might reduce labour there while increasing the demand for labour elsewhere because there is a natural lower cost base. If there’s more automation in production, therefore there’s more disposable income for people to do other things and to focus more on their side activities. Maybe, as I said before, not work 5 days a week, but maybe work four or three or whatever it is. What are the jobs of the future? What are the jobs that we see increasing in the future? Obviously, there’re a lot of jobs that relate to the technology side, that relate obviously to AI, that’s a little bit self-serving, and everything that relates to information technology, computer science, computer technology, computer engineering, et cetera. More broadly in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, that might actually be more needed. Because there is a broadening of all of these elements of contact with digital, with AI over time also with robots and robotics, that those jobs will increase. There’s a thesis that actually other jobs that are a little bit more related to agriculture, education, et cetera, might not see a dramatic impact, that will still need for, I guess, teachers and the need for people working in farms, et cetera. I think this assumes that probably the AI revolution will come much before the fundamental evolution that will come from robotics afterwards. Then there’s obviously this discussion around declining roles. Anything that’s fundamentally routine, like data entry, clinical roles, paralegals, for example, routine manufacturing, anything that’s very repetitive in nature will be taken away. I have the personal thesis that there are jobs that are actually very blue-collar jobs, like HVAC installation, maintenance, et cetera, plumbing, that will be still done by humans for a very long time because there are actually, they appear to be repetitive, but they’re actually complex, and they require manual labour that cannot be easily, I think, right now done by robots and replacements of humans. Actually, I think there’re blue-collar roles that will be on the increase rather than on decrease that will demand a premium, because obviously, they are apprenticeship roles, certification roles, and that will demand a premium. Maybe we’re at the two ends. There’s an end that is very technologically driven of jobs that will need to necessarily increase, and there’s at the other end, jobs that are very menial but necessarily need to be done by humans, and therefore will also command a premium on the other end. Bertrand Schmitt I think what you say make a lot of sense. If you think about AI as a stack, my guess is that for the foreseeable futur

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    71 – Is AI All Hype, No Substance?

    Tech Deciphered

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    70 – AI as a co-founder

    Can AI be a co-founder? Do you need a technical co-founder, any more? How about a business co-founder? What can AI do for you as co-founder? Will this become the “brave new world” of start-ups, small and medium businesses? For this and much more discussion, a no BS perspective on AI as a potential co-founder. Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Schmitt Intro     Welcome to episode 70 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we’ll talk about AI as a co-founder. Can AI be your co-founder? Do you need a technical co-founder anymore? Or do you need a business co-founder anymore? What can AI do for you as a co-founder? Will this become the brave new world of startup and small businesses? Nuno, what’s your take on this topic? Have you started seeing that for early stage startups, the AI co-founder?   Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Yeah. We start seeing this notion of people now—”Oh, I could be a single founder.” I mean, single founders have existed for a long time. We’ll come back to a little bit the taxonomies of founding teams. But definitely, is now a little bit of a trend where people are like, “Well, I don’t need a co-founder. I’m just going to go do my own thing.” Normally, the case is made more for, “Oh, I don’t need a technical co-founder. I can vibe code and put some stuff together and go through things.”     As we go through the episode today, I think we’ll go into the details on why technical co-founders might still matter and why there are certain areas of technical founding that might not matter as much where AI can really be your co-pilot, so to speak.     The Classic Case for Co-Founders     But maybe let’s start with what is the case for co-founders? Why do you need to have a co-founder? Why can’t you just do it yourself? Historically, there’s been really sort of an angle where there’s sort of these two entities in the founding team. Right? The business founder and the technical founder.     The business founder is the person that runs business related activities. If you’re doing, for example, enterprise software, SaaS, et cetera, your business co-founder is responsible for go-to-market like hiring sales—in particular, at the beginning actually being the person who does sales, establishing partnerships, creating and managing elements that are more related to admin with the help maybe of third parties around finance, et cetera. The business founder is more the person who’s focused on the business aspects of the company, which would be go-to-market, which includes sales, channel partnerships, marketing, et cetera. Might include, as I said, the admin side, et cetera.     Then the technical co-founder is more focused on elements that are connected to the technology stack, development of the code base. If it’s just software, development of software, could be more on the product side as well, someone who’s more of a product manager, et cetera. That’s why you need those two entities. Because you need these two entities, so to speak, these two people. Because you need someone who has more knowledge of how to develop a code base, how to get it off the ground, how to develop the MVP, the minimum viable product early on.     On the other side, you need someone who figures out: how do we get this thing to market, how do we actually deploy it, how do we monetise it, how do we create partnerships if they apply. That’s why we’ve had this classic case for founding teams. Now just to be very clear, it is also true that we’ve also had single founding teams for a long time. We have companies that have been founding only for one person. But at the end of the day, the ethos has been, let’s have two co-founders, one on the technical side at least and one or more on the technical side and one or more on the business side at the very least.   Bertrand Schmitt That’s true. That’s what you have typically seen. Maybe, going back historically, maybe the most famous example of this technical co-founder plus business co-founder has been the founding team of Apple—Steve Jobs with Mr Wozniak. Steve, on the business side; Woz, as he was called, on the technical side. That has been that maybe that’s reference point for all of Silicon Valley for decades. At the same time, it has not been true for every successful company. If I take HP, for instance—if I remember well, they were both technical co-founders: Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard. If you take Microsoft, Bill Gates had, in some ways, a lesser co-founder, but both were technical. Paul Allen was technical like Bill Gates.   Nuno Gonçalves Pedro I would say Gates was more incredibly technical, but he became a business guy. I think that was part of the secrets of Microsoft early on. He was very business-savvy in some ways. He was very technical. Until this day, I think he’s extremely technical and extremely intelligent, but he was definitely very business-savvy.   Bertrand Schmitt He was able to wear two hats in some ways. If you think about HP, it’s probably a similar story. When we talk about the one-person founder alone by himself, the question would be, is it a technical co-founder or business co-founder or a mix of both? Someone who can do both even early on or who learned to do both pretty quickly. Probably, Bill Gates would be a good example if we assume Paul Allen was less critical.   Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Yeah. I think that’s a good point, and you went back to one of the OGs like Wozniak and Jobs. I’d say Jobs was business clearly, great marketeer, et cetera. But he was also very deeply involved in product. Interestingly enough, think maybe not as involved on product early on as he became later on with NeXT and then his second coming, so to speak, to Apple. Where you get much more involved in product management and how products were deployed. But to your point, he wasn’t a technical co-founder. Clearly, that was not the role.     I think if we look at some of the great success like Google, Sergei and Larry were both very technical. I guess they brought in Eric Schmidt very early on to be the CEO. But at the end of the day, the definition of founders in Silicon Valley, maybe we’ll come back to that later, is at least you need to have technical founders early on. Then maybe the business people will come along or maybe one of the technical people will go more onto the business side. But you need to have this duality of role that you, Bertrand, we were just talking about. Someone who either becomes more business-savvy, more business side, but definitely someone who’s more on the technical side. I think that’s how the Silicon Valley has emerged over the last many decades. Right?   Bertrand Schmitt Yeah. It’s interesting you brought in the story of Google with Eric Schmidt because you could argue they brought him in as a CEO, but he used to be CTO at—was it Novell? I forgot.   Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Novell. Yeah. I think he was CEO of Novell at some point. Yeah.   Bertrand Schmitt He was CEO at some point because I was going to say, clearly, he has also a technical background. Able to do the business side. No question. But he was also coming from the technical side.   Nuno Gonçalves Pedro He was definitely technical at the beginning of his career, and he was also at PARC, Bell Labs, and a variety of other organisations. He was in software engineering at Sun Microsystems, to your point. Then he became the CEO and chairman of Novell. But he is a technical guy by background, for sure. No doubt. He has a PhD. But he was brought in to be the CEO. He was brought in to be more the business guy. I think, very honestly, Silicon Valley loves the story of actually the technical CEO. The person who has at least very product or deep product knowledge and understanding of technology, so it doesn’t get bullshitted necessarily by the rest of the engineering team, so to speak.     Now there’s notable exceptions to that. There are companies that were built very heavily on people that were incredibly business-savvy and very much on the go-to-market side. But, again, justifying why you have co-founders, why you have the technical person and the business person at the very least early on in the structure of the company.   Bertrand Schmitt If we look at more recently, of course, we have the exception of Elon Musk starting and running so many companies in parallel. Some he didn’t technically funded. He was early on investor, took over very quickly. But he’s also an interesting example of a very deeply technical person with very strong business acumen, obviously. That’s another example. Do you have examples of many successful companies just started by a very business co-person in the tech industry? Obviously, outside tech, it’s a different story. Yeah?   Nuno Gonçalves Pedro Not a lot, but I feel like in the enterprise software side, there are people that have managed to be great at doing it because they are amazing at building sales teams, and amazing at then building engineering teams around them. I’m not sure I can start giving as many examples as we’ve given on the other side of people that did have a very strong technical background so to speak. I don’t know if he’s a technical guy. I do think he had the bachelor’s in electrical engineering. One guy is David Duffield. He was the guy who foun

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    69 – Travel Hacks & Preferences

    What do we travel with? How do we prefer to travel? What are our travel hacks?  If you are seasoned travel or just getting into that hamster wheel, this is the episode for you. Our thoughts, best practices and hacks on traveling. Share with us yours on LinkedIn or X. Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves Pedro INTRODUCTION Welcome to Episode 69 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today we’ll go on a slightly softer note and discuss our travel hacks and preferences. Bertrand and I often are asked, “What do you guys travel with? What do you prefer to travel with? What are your travel hacks?” And a few other questions in this world of hamster wheel travelling. Today we’ll share a bunch of our preferences. We’ll share a lot of the things we travel with, from luggage to electronics to other services and devices. We will share to the best of our knowledge, how to really do it in style, if that’s at all possible, once you’re in that hamster wheel. We’ll share some of our hacks, not only for business travelling, but also for leisure travelling. Interesting stuff. We all have our hacks. We all have our stuff going on. PREFERENCES TRAVEL Airlines, alliances, loyalty programs Maybe we start with airlines and all the things around that. Bertrand. Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, sure. Don’t get me started on Air France, who cancelled on me a huge quantity of miles without alerting me, without notice, just a few weeks before I was supposed to take a flight. I will try my best to never use them again. Nuno Goncalves Pedro It was that bad. Air France is out, so that’s the beginning. Let’s maybe talk about the guys who are in. I’ll give you my top airlines around the world. Obviously this depends. Depends if you have to travel through that region or if you’re travelling to that region. My favourites, I think maybe not sure if it’s in full order, but I would say Emirates, obviously, Qatar Airways. If you’re hubbing through Middle East or if you’re going to the Middle East, two amazing airlines, probably two of the best in the world. I would say maybe Emirates is my favourite now. I have to be thoughtful in how I put that forward. Qatar is also exceptional, obviously if you’re hubbing through Doha. Incredible airline as well. The Asian ones in general, we’ll leave the Chinese for a second because that’s a different ballgame all together. Let’s not say all Asian ones and obviously different ones are great. I’d say Singapore Airlines continues being systematically an exceptional airline. They’ve become very expensive, but an exceptional airline. A little bit SOP driven, only airline in the world, true story, that I complained not once or twice, but three times on the same incident, and I actually never got a response from them on an incident which is interesting. In general, service is exceptional. Their facilities at Changi Airport are exceptional. The planes are really well-kept, the food is great, very attentious, and really like them. Cathay, I haven’t flown with them in a while. They went through a bit of a slump at some point. They were my favourite for a long time. Then they went through a bit of a slump in terms of product in particular, in terms of the quality of the product, in terms of the quality of the seats, service on board, et cetera. I’ve heard positive things recently, so maybe worthwhile putting them back on my Top 5 list around the world. Then the Korean Airlines in general are pretty strong on service. Depends a little bit on the plane. I’ve had always better experiences with Korean Air than with Asiana. Maybe Korean Air gets that last Top 5 thing. Talking about the negative ones for me that I try to avoid. I try to avoid as much as possible some of the European ones. TAP Air Portugal, the Portuguese one, is actually pretty decent by European standards. British Airways depends on the format of the plane. I find their business class service and product not to be as compelling as other airlines right now. I always found the service on British Airways, you only get great service on reshares if you’re in first class. On long haul, even in business, it’s a little bit matron. It’s like, “Sit down and just stay put, and we’ll serve you, but we won’t really be particularly paying attention to you.” In some ways, TAP Air Portugal, I think they’re a little bit more thoughtful and nicer. Lufthansa is similar to British Airways. I’ve had very mixed experiences, but in general not great. The service, they got a lot of bad rap on their first class stuff. In Europe, I’m not sure there’s anyone that I’m excited about. I haven’t flown with Air France a long time. Apparently I shouldn’t. Iberia I’ve flown with and it’s okay-ish. I don’t remember any airline in Europe that I’m particularly fond of. Maybe I’m missing someone. SAS is okay, I guess in the Nordics, but not a great deal of amazing airlines in there. Then negative Chinese. Most of the Chinese airlines, I haven’t flown with them in a long time, so I obviously have to be careful in not pushing it forward. Not a huge fan of JAL and ANA in Japan. When in doubt, I would go ANA. Then in Taiwan, also not particularly excited about any of the Taiwanese airlines, but they’re not bad either, so it’s okay kind of thing. Then on the American Airlines, which I’m sure people are excited to know about, I’m really not a fan of United. Sadly, they’re on Star Alliance Bertrand Schmitt Do you remember this video on United? There was this guy being dragged out of the plane, bloodied and everything. Nuno Goncalves Pedro It sounds about right, I think. Bertrand Schmitt I think it’s just before COVID or at the beginning of COVID. I forgot. It was bad. It was so bad. Nuno Goncalves Pedro My favourite was only domestic flights with Virgin America. By the way, Virgin Atlantic, I’m going to fly again with them in a couple of months and I remember them fondly. Their upper class product was really cool back in the day. Their lounge was really cool at Heathrow. This was many years ago. Looking forward to experimenting with it again. Virgin America was really strong and then obviously they merged with Alaska. Alaska is okay. It’s good. I feel it still has a little bit of the Continental and Virgin America ethos, which is pretty good. I’d say of the big ones in the US, the only one that I think has improved quite a bit in terms of service has been Delta Air Lines, although their hub is Atlanta, which as I call it, is where you get lost in space in general. It’s a black hole, I guess. We’ll come back to airports later. American is okay-ish, but I’ve had some really bad experiences as well in American. United is the bottom for me. Southwest, I haven’t flown in a while. They’re quite expensive now, Southwest, actually. Bertrand Schmitt I think they have changed dramatically, Southwest, from what I read in terms of what you get, what is included, not included, how they work. It’s not the same. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Top 5 guys that I would make an effort to fly with: Qatar Airways, Emirates. Emirates obviously doesn’t really belong to any of the alliances, which makes it a little bit more cumbersome for points gathering and all that stuff, but I think they’re really top end. I think Singapore Airlines belongs in that group. Then just below for me, Korean Air Lines and Cathay and then the rest. There’s preferences. I have preferences as I said. If I have a chance, I’ll go Delta rather than American or United. If it’s to Europe, then I prefer a European airline to American and to United. To Asia, the same thing. I prefer an Asian airline to American and United. Delta, it depends a little bit on the plane and all that stuff. That’s my rough preferences. I’ve had my worst experiences with United. My worst experience I think probably were all with United, delayed flights issues and all that stuff, bad service. Bertrand Schmitt If I have to fly to Europe, I used to try to use Air France, but two issues again, they take away your miles. That was during COVID. Two, you run the risk to have a strike in France. That’s obviously the risk. Now I’m probably more trying to fly Delta if I go to Europe. Asia, I will try to stay away from Air China, that’s for sure. I got some memorable experience when they were so scared away I would bring down a plane by using my tablet. It was just as crazy. I would say the Taiwanese airlines, I have overall positive experience. Not great, not bad, I would say. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Which is your favourite of the two? Bertrand Schmitt Let me be careful. It’s China Airways, China Air. There is a new one, actually, a third one that started recently. I cannot say I have a big preference, a clear-cut preference between the Taiwanese airlines. Taipei Airport is quite convenient to branch from in Asia. Nuno Goncalves Pedro It’s EVA Air or EVA Air and China Airlines? Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, EVA Air is one of them, China Airlines, and there is a third one now that just launched. Nuno Goncalves Pedro STARLUX, is that the one? STARLUX Airlines? Bertrand Schmitt Maybe. Yes. In the US, living in Seattle, this is a hub for Alaska. We use Alaska quite a bit. I will use Delta as well, and United if no other choice. Nuno Goncalves Pedro And American? Do you have a perspective on American? Bertrand

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    68 – “Winning the AI Race”… America’s AI Action Plan

    America’s AI action plan … “Winning the AI race” has just been announced. What is it all about? What are the implications? How will the rest of the world react? A deep dive into the announcement, approaches by EU and China, and overall implications of these action plans. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Context of the White House AI Summit Pillar I – Accelerating AI Innovation Pillar II – Building American AI Infrastructure Pillar III – Leading in International AI Diplomacy & Security Comparing Approaches – U.S. Action Plan vs. EU AI Act vs. China’s Strategy Implications and Synthesis Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno G. Pedro Welcome to episode 68 of Tech Deciphered. This episode will focus on America’s AI action plan, winning the AI race, which has just been announced a couple of weeks in by President Trump in the White House. Today, we’ll be discussing the pillars of this plan, from pillar I, the acceleration of AI innovation, to pillar II, building of American AI infrastructure, to pillar III, leading in international AI diplomacy and security. We’ll also further contextualise it, as well as compare the approaches between the US Action plan, and what we see from the EU and China strategy at this point in time. We’ll finalise with implications and synthesis. Bertrand, is this a watershed moment for the industry? Is this the moment we were all waiting for in terms of clarity for AI in the US? Bertrand Schmitt Yeah, that’s a great question. I must say I’m quite excited. I’m not sure I can remember anything like it since basically John F. Kennedy announcing the race to go to the moon in the early ’60s. It feels, as you say, a watershed moment because suddenly you can see that there is a grand vision, a grand plan, that AI is not just important, but critical to the future success of America. It looks like the White House is putting all the ducks in order in order to make it happen. There is, like in the ’60s with JFK, a realisation that there is an adversary, there is a competitor, and you want to beat them to that race. Except this time it’s not Russia, it’s China. A lot of similarities, I would say. Nuno G. Pedro Yeah. It seems relatively comprehensive. Obviously, we’ll deep dive into it today across a variety of elements like regulation, investments, view in relation to exports and imports and the rest of the world. So, relatively comprehensive from what we can see. Obviously, we don’t know all the details. We know from the announcement that the plan has identified 90 federal policy actions across the three pillars. Obviously, we’ll see how these come into practice over the next few months, few years. To your point, it is a defining moment. It feels a little bit like the space race of ’60s, et cetera. It’s probably warranted. We know that, obviously, AI platforms, AI services and products are changing the world as we speak. It’s pretty important to figure out what is the US response to it. Also interesting to know that we normally don’t talk about the US too much in terms of industrial policy. The US seems to have a private sector that, in and of itself, actually stands up to the game, and in particular in tech and high-tech, normally fulfils or fills the gaps that are introduced by big generational shifts in terms of technology. But in this case, there seems to be an industrial policy. This seems to set the stage for that industrial policy and how it moves forward, which, as you said, we haven’t seen in quite a long time. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. At the same time, on one side, yes, there is some level of industrial policy, but I feel quite a big part is getting the government out of the way so that private companies can truly innovate. Because America, like many other countries, have accumulated over decades regulations, you could call it over-regulations of many sectors and industries. I would say part of it is showing the way, but part of it is really a lot about just removing obstacles along the way that were posed by decades of government regulations and acknowledging that if these regulations are not removed, it could truly impede America’s chances to win the AI race. Nuno G. Pedro How did we get here? Obviously, there was an executive order in January this year, 2025, on removing barriers to American leadership in AI, the directive being the US to become the world capital of AI, so to speak. We had this announcement at the White House in late July 2025, the White House AI summit, which set the stage for this, winning the AI race, America’s AI action plan piece. That’s how we got here in the first place. Shall we jump into the pillars and get into the meat of this? Bertrand Schmitt Yes. Maybe to finish on setting the context, what was interesting with this announcement, it was not done the usual way. It was more done in the context and format of a podcast co-hosted by Olin Podcast. Some of our listeners may know that David Sachs, who used to be part of the Olin podcast, is now the AI and crypto Czar of the White House. Nuno G. Pedro Yes. It was done with much pomp and circumstance in the good old days of empire-making in some ways. Let’s jump into the first pillar, accelerating AI innovation. It feels like this pillar, there are a couple of interesting elements to it, but one of the key elements to it, I’d say the overarching element that we can see is removing onerous regulations that would hinder the development of AI. So, having a very light-touch regulatory approach and proactive support for AI development all across the board in terms of R&D, also across the elements of data that are put at the table. The plan apparently does call for the identification of rules to eliminate and even pre-empt state AI laws. Where the federal government would, in some ways, try to make sure that the state AI laws don’t come in and destroy a lot of these elements. We’ve discussed some of the stuff in the past; if our listeners remember, we talked about this, several onerous laws that were put forward in particular in California. It feels that the federal government is, in this case, sort of saying, actually we have to go in and be top down about this, and we want to remove onerous regulations across the board and make sure that they’re not put in place then by states. Bertrand Schmitt I’m very excited by all of this. Removing red tape and onerous regulations, I think, is critical to move forward, especially at such an early stage where we don’t really know where it’s going to go. As you said, California was preparing some very onerous regulations. Luckily, they were not signed into law by the governor, Gavin Newsom. But I think that was a very clear signal that states might decide to go crazy. We need to do something about it. Personally, I think it’s good to have the states being able to define some of their own regulation. But I would make an exception in the digital domain where things are pretty different across much more easily the borders. There is no border to the Internet in some ways. I think when it goes digital, it’s a much bigger issue, especially at such an early stage. If you look at startup companies, they cannot deal with a plethora of state regulations depending on which state the user is in. This would be a nightmare, to be frank. Not just regulations, but the multitude of regulations state by state. Personally, I’m pretty excited about that. The other piece of the puzzle is, of course, repealing the previous administration’s AI regulations that are just way too far-fetched, unnecessary, just going to hinder innovation. I’m very excited that this was removed, and I also believe they were a threat to free speech. Nuno G. Pedro There are elements here just to be a little bit even-handed, that we need to see how they play in action. One of them is this notion that this should not be acting as a Ministry of AI Truth, and that basically, there shouldn’t be ideological bias, so to speak. There’s been some mentions in general about preventing so-called woke AI, et cetera, et cetera, in federal use. It could go the other way as well. We know that a lot of the data out there has biases because of the way it was built. I think that part on the data side and the ideological bias side, interesting thoughts, put at the table in the plan. We’ll need to see how it pans out. I still have at least a couple of concerns on that. The second element that I feel we have to be moderately optimistic about, we’ll need to see how it pans out as well, is almost this notion of, if we eliminate almost all the key onerous regulations out there, that in some ways, self-regulation and market forces will compensate for us. We also know that that’s not been historically true in many cases. We’ll also need to see how that pans out. Obviously, just overregulating upfront, we’ve discussed it also in past episodes, like for example, the EU has done in the past, regulating upfront technologies without even understanding what the use cases are, is also not fruitful. It’s also not good. The US has had a long history of being lighter on regulatory environment, which has served it well in terms of technology advancements. In this case, we’ll need to see how the regulatory environment actually evolves. I’m also moderately

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    67 – Tech that Changed our Lives and Tech that Disappointed

    Nintendo Switch, the Nokia 7110… what are the tech devices and gadgets that changed your life? How about you biggest disappointments? In this episode of Tech Deciphered, we will share ours. We look forward to hearing yours. Share on LinkedIn or via email or X Navigation: Intro (01:34) Tech That Changed Our Lives Our Worst Tech Purchases Reflection & Takeaways Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand Schmitt Welcome to Tech Deciphered, episode 67. This will be a lighter episode as summer is upon us. We will discuss and talk about tech that changed our lives, as well as tech that disappointed. Some of you might know, some of you might not know, but both me and Nuno are tech nerds. We have played with tech most of our lives, always looking for the next available new piece of technology to use or collect. We are going to talk about that and maybe start on the positive side. The tech that changed our lives. Nuno Goncalves Pedro I’m sure everyone has their stories. Even if you’re not a nerd, there’s going to be that piece of equipment, that mobile phone, that gaming console, that whatever, that dramatically changed you, made you more productive, or allowed you to do something that you’d never done before, et cetera. It’s always an interesting conversation to have, and it creates a lot of wonderful memories. It brings you back to places, it brings you back to that moment where you bought the device, that first time that you used it, the experiences you had, some of them maybe actually, not necessarily positive. We’ll come back to the worst tech purchases of all time. Shall I launch Austilities, Bertrand? Shall I tell my first one? Bertrand Schmitt Sure, Nuno, feel free. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Good stuff. I’ll start with maybe the one that I’ve had the longest memory on, which is the Philips Videopac. Now, many of you will have no clue what I’m talking about. Bertrand Schmitt No idea. Nuno Goncalves Pedro The Videopac. Even Bertrand, which is impressive. The Videopac was a video game console that worked with cartridges, launched obviously via Philips. I’m not sure if the one I had was actually from Philips, question mark. It was the same format and I remember it very fondly. It was really a gaming console with a little joystick. Very basic thing. The Videopac was actually launched first thing in ’83. I’m not sure when I first started using it, but I suspect I was 7 or 8 years old, so that would have been a couple of years thereafter. I remember it fondly. We got it from Andorra. If you guys know, I was born in Portugal. Andorra is this small-owned country between Spain and France, and they had no sales taxes back then, so you’d go there and buy stuff really cheaply. I think that’s what we bought when I went there with my parents. I remember it very fondly. I remember playing games on it. Strangely enough, I don’t remember any of the games I played on it, but I remember it very fondly as one of my first computer experiences and stuff. That was pretty cool. Bertrand Schmitt Nice. I think in France. I’m not sure this one was available. At least it doesn’t ring a bell. I think we had some Atari consoles in France. Me, actually, I didn’t start with a console. I started with a regular computer. Not the PC kind. It was an Atari computer. Actually Atari 520ST, very popular in Europe. There was also Amiga that had similar computers. It was Motorola CPU 68000 if I remember. It was my first computer. Also, could be used for gaming, of course, 3.5-inch disk, if I remember well, some colors, I would say 320 times 200 pixels. It was great. It was a start for me of understanding computers, starting to program them. I might have started before actually to program computers, but it was not a computer I own. That was the first computer I owned. That was quite amazing at the time. I remember doing quite a bit with it. Nuno Goncalves Pedro My first computer was actually the Schneider Euro PC. I’d played before with the ZX Spectrum and with an Amstrad computer. Those did not belong to me. They were not my purchases. They were not for me. They belonged to my uncle. Bertrand Schmitt Not the same. Nuno Goncalves Pedro My first one that I owned was the Schneider Euro PC. It’s the first computer ever that I coded in. People probably don’t remember Schneider at all. It was a computer division. Bertrand Schmitt They do washing machines. Nuno Goncalves Pedro It was a little keyboard with the floppy drive, and then you had to connect a monitor. I had to get a monitor. Mine was color. It was really cool. It’s the first, as I said, first computer I ever coded on. I think that’s the first code I ever wrote was in basic. I played games on it. There was this volleyball game, like beach volleyball game that I remember playing on it. It was really, really, really cool. Very fond memories of it. I still have that computer somewhere back in Portugal in storage. Probably the first defining computer experience for me. Bertrand Schmitt Does it still work? Nuno Goncalves Pedro That I do not know. I’m intrigued by it. I do not know. I suspect not, but because of wear and tear, but I’m not sure. It was last time I played with it. I don’t know. Maybe it still does. Bertrand Schmitt Maybe it does value as an antique, actually. You never know this kind of stuff. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yes. Bertrand Schmitt My second big one was actually a handheld calculator, HP48X and then a later model, GX. The HP48 was really my entry, my start in the mobile computing world. It was amazing. For me, it Was my first computing device always in my pocket. It was in the mid-90s, I guess. It was great to do basic science, maths, physics, that sort of stuff. I also use it extensively to program in assembly language, which was not supported by HP. There was a small community of crazy people like me having fun programming in assemblies or their small handheld calculator doing stuff that was supposedly impossible to do on the calculator. The funny part is that some in our group ended up working for HP, developing the next follow on calculators for HP. Nuno Goncalves Pedro That’s very, very cool. I have done HP48GX and I remember it fondly. I used it in college quite heavily. I did do some coding on it at some point in time. Very cumbersome device to do any coding on, but it was like the top of all the freaking calculators, graphical stuff, et cetera, et cetera. It’s like an unfair advantage back then when computers weren’t around. Bertrand Schmitt Maybe one more point was a great RPL, the Reverse Polish Lisp language, which was very special to this model of HP. You have to enter your calculation in a very different way compared to the calculators. I love this approach of RPL. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Definitely an amazing device. Following up maybe with a couple of PCs from my end. Two that come to mind, the Compact Deskpro 386S. It was a 386 from Intel. Super overengineered device. Expensive as hell. When Compaq was in their heyday, it was like a pretty chunky desktop. Did a lot of stuff on it. It’s where my coding evolved. A lot of desktop publishing, writing stuff, et cetera. It was a significant device for me. The other one, probably immediately thereafter was my first custom-made Tower PC. I bought a Tower, and then I had my own motherboard that I bought and my own hard drive and whatever. Making just work together was in and of itself complex. I remember that fondly as well. It’s probably the first PC where I did heavy-duty gaming, the Deskpro being more the first that I did a lot of desktop publishing in. I remember the Tower one more because of gaming actually, shockingly enough. It went with me, I think through college, if I’m not mistaken, the tower one. Those two were my next PCs that I remember very, very, very fondly. Compaq went to hell at some point in time. They merged I think with someone. Was it Gateway or something more did they merge with? Bertrand Schmitt I think so. Long ago. Nuno Goncalves Pedro They did go to hell at some point. Bertrand Schmitt Yes. I think they got killed by the new approach pushed by Dell to make computers on demand. Actually, I was also a customer of Compaq. My first PC was a Compaq. It was a Compaq laptop, Compaq 286 SLT. It was a huge brick. I was just checking £14. That was my first IBM compatible PC. That was great. Technically it was my dad’s computer, but I was using it. Then like you, at some point I made my own tower PC. Did some PC gaming from that point as well, and other stuff, of course. When you make your first Tower, that’s a special moment because you start to realize it’s all adding components that work well together. That’s a special stage in the journey. Nuno Goncalves Pedro Compaq was bought for $25 billion in 2002 by HP. They were Texas-based as well, so was Dell. I think Compaq was global PC maker for a while, and then Dell overtook it, and the rest, as you said, is history. Maybe my next one was, I bought it, I think I was on vacation in England. I had saved some money and this was in the ’90s still. I’m going back in time for my Tower PC, which was the SEGA Game Gear. I never had a Game Boy, actually. I played with other people’s Game Boys, but I wanted like a graphics thing. I know this is going to be pissing off a bunch of people. I always preferred Sonic to Super Mar

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    66 – The Global Tech Labor Reset

    The reckoning is here. Once a safe harbor, Big Tech has finally also gone full out on layoffs. Is this a structural shift to employment in Tech? Will the subsequent talent spillover be great for start-ups and entrepreneurship? Will it positively affect other industries? In this episode of Tech Deciphered, we will answer these and other questions in a deep discussion on the Global Tech Labor reset. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Layoffs & Restructuring Shifts in Compensation & Perks Rise of Fractional, Freelance, and Solopreneur Work Talent Spillover to Other Sectors Geography & Culture Shifts Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Nuno Goncalves Pedro Welcome to Episode 66 of Tech DECIPHERED. Today, we’ll talk about the global labour tech reset. Tech and big tech, which seemed immune to any lay-offs, seems now to be under fire. Massive lay-offs over the last 2.5 years, a lot of discussion around the importance of having a computer science, computer engineering background, and so what seemed to be a safe haven for any graduate is now under stress.     Today, we will discuss the structural perspective on what’s happening in the market, if this is a long-term trend or not, what has led us to this, and what is next. We’ll talk about the rise of fractional freelance and solopreneur work, as well as talk about talent spillovers, and some of the usual geographical dynamics around the space. Bertrand, a huge shift in tech.   Bertrand Schmitt Yes, definitely. It’s pretty big. I think it started probably around 2022, once we got some changing interest rates that have a pretty massive impact in stock prices for a lot of companies. At that time, a lot of companies decided, and usually under some pressure, that it was time to be more efficient, to generate more cash. Yes, you want to grow, but not grow at all cost. You have to go efficiently.     That’s when we started to see some share price going down and step by step, quarter after quarter. Some change in attitude with a lot of big tech and that has created some impact in term of lay-off from different parts of the business, from the sales team to the DNA, to even engineering R&D.     What is also been happening since 2022, 2023 is a change of focus. A lot of focus is being put in AI. A lot of investment in CapEx is going to AI. At some point, if you want to keep doing all this investing, investments, you might have to get some other part of the business in order to create additional savings to do all the spend you can in AI. There has been more recently a switch. It’s not about just efficiency to push all the… But generating the ability to invest in AI.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro It’s part of a broader movement. Before we step back a little bit and go back in history, even recently, we’ve heard that there’s talks between Meta and a bunch of private equity firms like KKR, Brookfield, Apollo, and others, to actually help in financing data centers. Meta is a gigantic company, so one would assume they have cash to do all these things. Maybe they don’t.     To your point, that level of efficiency that is now needed in the market where you need to throw actual money, CapEx, into the building of infrastructure, the building of the core underpins of what you’re doing is pretty vital. But let’s go back a little bit of a second, and we’ve talked about it maybe in our early episodes.     Companies like Meta, Facebook back in the day, Google, Alphabet now, and others had a tendency, in particular in the Bay Area, to hoard engineers. They would over-hire. There was a lot of discussion that some of these players had as much as 20%-50% the engineering resources they needed, and part of that is that they didn’t want their competitors to have them, and so in some ways, we went from hoarding too much capacity to the days of COVID that in some ways illustrated that there were a lot of people that maybe were not working very hard also on the engineering side, not just on the sales, et cetera side.     That right-sizing, I think, has been a long time coming. We discussed in a past episode that there was a little bit of an adaptation, or an adaptation, rather to the market by a lot of these public companies saying, “Now that I have a mandate where there’s lay-offs happening in other industries, I can do it myself.” But this time is different, and I think the message of probably today’s episode is going to be around that. This time is different.     There are some fundamentals that have changed. Bertrand has already alluded to AI as one fundamental shift in terms of the efficiency of engineers, in particular more junior engineers. There is more behind this. There is the notion that you need less to deliver more. In tech, I would start with a platitude. I think if anything, everyone talks about AI and how AI is going to disrupt financial services, and it’s disrupting functions like marketing, and displacing people around, for example, customer service, and all of this. But a lot of people forget to talk about the most obvious industry that’s being disrupted by AI, and that industry is tech.     Tech is disrupting itself with AI because you have all these tools available, you have all these platforms that you’re deploying, and they have value for your own purposes. They become the underpinning of a more efficient workforce, in particular if you’re a tech company. A lot of people don’t talk much about that, but I think a lot of what we will talk today around lay-offs and efficiencies and all of that actually do relate to the fundamental shifts we’re seeing where the emergence with a lot of these AI tools and platforms that we’re seeing, so tech is disrupting itself at the end of the day.   Bertrand Schmitt I think AI has two effects. One is it’s so big, it’s so important, you cannot miss it as a business that you are going to reallocate resources. From your traditional product lines, your traditional development, expansion, creation of new features, and you will reallocate instead more money to AI. It can be one side, can be just CapEx, and the other side will be, of course, software that you want to develop connected to AI.     I think that was the first effects that started early on. What it means is that many companies ultimately decide to fire people who are not so AI knowledgeable and instead hire people who have more expertise in AI. I think what you are talking is a second effect of AI. Now we start to reap the rewards of the investment in AI. What we are seeing as a result is that we can do more with less.     Basically, if you’re a software company, or a tech company, you have a lot in software engineering. If you have a lot in software engineering, guess what? One of the best way to leverage AI is actually to use it to develop more efficiently, faster. The tools have gotten better and better, what we got 2 years ago was barely usable, 1 year ago start to be good. Now, I must say, it’s shockingly impressive what you get if you have tool like Visual Studio or if you use some other tools on the market that are even more focused on AI.     It’s quite shocking the quality of the code auto completions that you can get. It’s quite shocking what you can get from other tools directly like ChatGPT. It’s definitely like having a buddy that can support you, check your code, provide you some IDS, run code, help you go faster through documentation, testing. You are going to save time. The first effect might be, you know what? We can do so much more with the same workforce. Maybe we can reduce slightly the workforce, and we’ll still do more thanks to AI.     Of course, there might be a question of you might want to keep the same size of software engineering so that they deliver even way more than before and your pace of development is truly accelerating. Companies are facing multiple options here. It looks like many are choosing to be more efficient.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro Yeah, there’s just… Let’s talk numbers, right? In terms of lay-offs, 2024 alone, it seems like the number was around 250K-260K, globally, people were laid off.   Bertrand Schmitt In tech.   Nuno Goncalves Pedro In tech, yeah. This is global tech lay-offs, right? In tech, 250K, 260K tech lay-offs in 2024. In the US, it varies. We have numbers that go from 95,000-150,000 tech jobs in the US alone that were laid off in 2024. We’ve had numbers that over a period of 2.5 years, 400,000 people in tech were laid off globally. These are massive numbers. This is an industry that by itself was already, in some ways, part of some efficiencies. It’s not the most inefficient industry in the world in some ways, so very significant numbers that we’re talking about.   Bertrand Schmitt It’s not just lay-off, it’s also who you are not hiring anymore. I think we found an interesting stats and the quantity of entry-level tech jobs have dropped by 50% since 2019. Before the pandemic, new graduates made up 15%, of big tech hires. Today, it’s just 7%. We’re moving from 15% to 7%. It’s pretty shocking.     Where is it coming from? We talk about general cost-cutting measures post-COVID, but for sure, there is a lot around AI and automation, and especially since that AI is replacing a lot of more entry-level jobs. It can be QA, it can be IT support

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Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news. To understand what’s really happening behind the surface, join our hosts, Nuno Goncalves Pedro, investor, co-founder and managing partner at Strive Capital, and Bertrand Schmitt, entrepreneur, co-Founder & Chairman at App Annie. They have been each in tech for almost 25 years, are now based in Silicon Valley, having both previously worked and lived in Europe and Asia. With Tech DECIPHERED, discover how the best entrepreneurs pitch, how investors think, and what are the deep trends underlying the tech industry. To learn more about Tech DECIPHERED, head over to www.decipheredshow.com for more info about the podcast, show notes, resources and complete transcripts.

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  • صناع العمل
    Bertrand Schmitt & Nuno G. Pedro
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  • حقوق النشر
    © Bertrand Schmitt & Nuno Goncalves Pedro
  • موقع البرنامج على الويب
    Tech Deciphered

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