Christopher Lochhead: prediction

Transcript context

…Okay. Let's do it. So I'm 55 years old, Lenny. I started my first company when I was 18. I got thrown out of school. I don't have a GED. And I've been in the tech industry the whole time. And the first thing I would share is anything's possible. Don't listen to anybody who shits on you. I've a chat on as much as you could possibly imagine. I have four or five different learning differences. ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I was told I couldn't read. I was certainly told I couldn't write. I've written 14 number one fucking bestsellers, et cetera, et cetera. And so my point is, if you are somebody for whom you want to spend your professional time working on the exponential different as opposed to the incremental better, which I got to believe is a meaningful percentage of the people who consume your shit, if you want to work on the incremental better, incremental better is important. I want the Boeing engineers working on the incremental better. I don't want the air traffic control system that's the exponential different. No. And a lot of incremental improvement over time can be exponential. So if you're a product manager and you're running a highly successful product with a massive install base, and you're looking at your next rev, and you're trying to figure out of the 472 features that you could build. What are the 26 that really matter? And you want to go talk to your customers to find out what those incremental improvements are and to stack rank them into all that good. PRD, MRD, IUD, all that shit. There's a big place in the world for all of that. It's incredibly important. That's not category design. So with that said, I think, Lenny, we are at the greatest time in history for our industry. I think all the indicators show that the amount of innovation that is going to happen in the next five years will eclipse the amount of innovation that happened in the last 20 years. It's accelerating. AI is insanely exciting, dangerous, concerning. Do we need to focus on the downside? Do we need to be smart? Do we need to be thoughtful? Do we need to learn? Do we need to work with regulators and legislators? Absolutely. Could it go horribly? Oh, sure. But, that's always true. AI feels a little bit different, but it's always true. And for the record, the Luddites are always wrong. The point being now is the greatest time in history to be a creator, to be an entrepreneur, to be a marketer. I've been a marketer for my entire adult life. It's never been greater than it is right now. And so here's the big thing that I would share. If you are somebody for whom you want to make an exponential difference, you want to innovate, you want to create new value where there wasn't, you want to have a legendary career where you can look back on your career and go, "You know what? I was part of this and that. And I was on this team." Now is the greatest time in history. And what I would say to you is the future needs you. you can look back on your career and go, "You know what? I was part of this and that. And I was on this team." Now is the greatest time in history. And what I would say to you is the future needs you. Most people are not working on the exponential different. And so the future of our world requires that the innovative people, that the entrepreneurial people stand up, take advantage of these incredible technologies. And a lot of people, particularly in my age group, Lenny, shit on millennials, Gen Z, what are lovingly referred to as native digitals. Absolutely not. I'm inspired by them. And I think the next generation of our entrepreneurs will be our greatest generation of entrepreneurs. So my point is, now's the time. The future needs you. Don't listen to any of the bullshit. I don't care what the boo birds say. Absolutely, go for it because there's never been a greater time to design and dominate new categories of innovation than right now.…

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