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The end of incrementalism: how AI will reward maximalist start-ups

philipjclark.substack.com · 1,300 words · saved by 4 readers

In the 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee launched the world wide web, we’ve seen two innovation cycles. The first was the consumer internet. During this rough and tumble period, it paid to stalk the fringes of the web: the internet was a blank canvas for inventing new consumer behaviors. Products went from offbeat curiosities one year to ubiquitous facts of life the next. Iconic successes seemed outright strange at first: Amazon (wait days to receive a product you’ve never seen), eBay (buy beanie babies from someone thousands of miles away), Google (trust an algorithm to answer your questions), LinkedIn (publicly post your resume), Facebook (share personal updates with people you haven’t seen in years), Airbnb (stay in a stranger’s home), Uber (get into a stranger’s car), Doordash (hire a stranger to pick up your food). Some of the also-rans were even weirder like Boo.com (3D avatar shopping assistants) and Flooz (digital currency for e-commerce).

In the 30 years since Tim Berners-Lee launched the world wide web, we’ve seen two innovation cycles. The first was the consumer internet. During this rough and tumble period, it paid to stalk the fringes of the web: the internet was a blank canvas for inventing new consumer behaviors. Products went from offbeat curiosities one year to ubiquitous facts of life the next. Iconic successes seemed outright strange at first: Amazon (wait days to receive a product you’ve never seen), eBay (buy beanie babies from someone thousands of miles away), Google (trust an algorithm to answer your…

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