🌱 5-Bit Fridays: The gaming gambit, the AI price-fixing dystopia, seeing Supertrends, what's left in tech, and more

Plus a lesson from LEGO on the risks of unfocused extensions

Jaryd here! 👋 You’re reading 5-Bit Fridays—your weekly ~5-minute morning roundup of 5 actionable insights that can help you build and grow your product. You can read my main How They Grow deep dives here, or my short essays on one useful idea here.

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Friends, not that anyone asked for this, but if any of you enjoy a good live set, I thought I’d share this one banging deep house mix I’ve been just playing again and again. I may be biased, but the backdrop is just gorgeous. Biased, because that’s my hometown—Cape Town! 🇿🇦

Onto the (more) serious stuff… I do have one quick question for y’all.

5 snackable insights

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(1) If the internet is mostly complete…where does tech go from here?

🔑 Quote: “Fundamentally, I think the boom in tech returns was about the building out of the internet. And now that the internet has been pretty much built out, I think it’s not clear if any other effort — AI, deeptech, etc. — can offer the same kind of huge rewards for small commitments of capital.” —

Noah Smith

• We’re in the zero-sum game of the internet. When everything has been built, and we have finite time to use these things, then the success of any new product will mostly come at the expense of cannibalizing the attention given to an existing product. This is just what happens in mature industries.

• This is especially true at the consumer layer. There’s no room for “We’re an app that…”, and a few geeks in a garage building a billion-dollar business is likely a bygone era.

🏃 CTA: In a world of slower growth (aka in mature industries), efficiency becomes more important than growth. The goal is bigger profit margins. 

👉 Read the full post by Noah Smith

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(2) You really don’t have to be a manager…and perhaps we should stop making all the best ICs one…

🔑 Quote: “Unfortunately, many people see management as an inevitable part of a successful career. But as I learned the painful way, management is not just a title. It’s a skill—and not a particularly easy one.” —

Elena Verna

• Being a great IC does not mean you will be a great manager, yet that’s how managers are chosen. And it results in a) losing a great contributor, and b) gaining a shitty manager.

• The people who really want to be managers often shouldn’t be. And the people who love IC work are often best rewarded for great work by keeping them on that track.

🏃 CTA: If you like managing people problems and mentoring, then perhaps management is for you. Otherwise, you can get the prestige and comp with a Staff of Principal role. And as a leader...normalize IC leadership!

👉 Read the full post by Elena Verna

Most companies overpay for, and underuse, their product analytics platforms.

It’s true…

They easily spend tens of thousands a year on analytics, but the products are often geared toward more technical users who need to know how to configure the data to get what they want. Meaning, there’s a big usage delta.

That’s where June comes in. June gives non-technical users simple and free product analytics.

By being hyper-focused on serving early-stage B2B companies, June does two unique things:

1. Instead of “user” based analytics, they focus on “company” level analytics…which is exactly what SaaS companies selling to other businesses need.

2. With just a single snippet install, you’re all set! Within 15 minutes, you’ll have beautiful reports to start discussing with your team.

If you’re a B2B founder or PM, I’m not saying switch right now. But give it a look or try—just add the JS snippet, and at no cost, see what June reveals to you.

(3) Why are all the big tech companies (e.g. Netflix, LinkedIn, Apple) betting big on gaming?

🔑 Quote: “Netflix seeks to leverage its existing intellectual properties by creating games based on popular shows like "Stranger Things" and "The Queen’s Gambit." This strategy not only extends the life of its content but also attracts fans of these shows to explore new, interactive experiences, thereby deepening audience engagement” —

Bandan Jot Singh

• Many companies that are in the business of holding your attention—whether through entertainment (Netflix) or information (NYT, LI)—are looking to expand their ecosystems to include the most attention-holding category there is. Games.

• The “game” is simple: Broaden the entertainment ecosystems with integrated gaming experiences that require no additional hardware or subscriptions. This is both an attention honeypot and a revenue diversification play.

🏃 CTA: I’d go read this brilliant post on the power of Mini-Games Marketing. TLDR—there’s an attainable opportunity in gaming for every business!

👉 Read the full post by Bandan Jot Singh

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(4) How you can spot a Supertrend and find your next (big) idea?

🔑 Quote: “Finding and investing against the right supertrend may mark the difference between a lucrative career and one spent scrabbling for meager gains, battling against the tide of a dying sector.” —

Mario Gabriele

• To find great ideas, you must become an information machine, consuming high-quality information at a high volume.

• One of the best ways to do this is to read books and other sources of well-researched and thoughtful writing. Other mediums (YouTube, Pods, etc) matter too.

• The trick though is to cover a wide range of interests and follow your curiosity. Because then, you can start drawing all sorts of unexpected connections.

🏃 CTA: As Buffet says, “Read 500 pages…every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

p.s If you missed my last post, here's 100 books to help you grow

👉 Read the full post by Mario Gabriele

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(5) Oooh boy…are we entering an AI price-fixing dystopia?

🔑 Quote: “Instead of getting together with your rivals and agreeing not to compete on price, you can all independently rely on a third party to set your prices for you. Property owners feed RealPage’s “property management software” their data, including unit prices and vacancy rates, and the algorithm—which also knows what competitors are charging—spits out a rent recommendation. If enough landlords use it, the result could look the same as a traditional price-fixing cartel.” — Rogé Karma for The Atlantic

• Colluding with other companies on price fixing is antitrust 101 stuff, and goes against everything a free-market economy stands for—without price competition there’s no reason to innovate and add value.

• As a result, it’s a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $100 million fine.

• But eerily, it seems AI may well be doing this, as algorithmic collusion appears to be spreading to more and more industries. And existing laws may not be equipped to stop it.

🏃 CTA: Cartels are bad, mkay? Just be very mindful of using any algorithms to set prices, ESPECIALLY if it ingests some non-public competitor data set. 

👉 Read the full post by Rogé Karma

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One lesson from the HTG archives

Besides being the best toy on the planet (I’ll die on that hill!), LEGO is also one of the most powerful brands. That’s why this will always be one of my personal favorite deep dives: How LEGO Grows.

🧩 When expanding from your core, you need to be crystal clear on a set of integrated choices…(1) What do you want to be, (2) What market do you want to play in, and (3) Why should you—and How will you—win in that market.

Why did several of LEGO’s bold bets that deviated from the core not pan out?

The trend was randomness, over extension, and a lack of cohesive innovation around a specific and emerging opportunity.

They didn’t identify some killer threat (like film was for Kodak, or streaming for Blockbuster) and go after it. They pushed into as many new markets as possible, and just wanted to diversify their channels/segments/products, etc. In this sense, it was like throwing spaghetti to the wall.

AKA, by trying to expand on all fronts, they took on too many big bets in a short period of time — losing the focus and disciple that got them there.

An excerpt from the LEGO deep dive…👇

How LEGO Grows

Before we say goodbye…

(1/3) Here’s what I use to grow 🛠️

• I use Sidebar as a leadership program to accelerate my growth as a product leader. An excellent community for founders and senior leaders. (Learn more)

• I use Circeback as my new AI notetaking meeting buddy. I’ve never seen actionable summaries so good—neither has my team. 10/10. (Learn more)

• I use Perplexity for everything. It’s my new Google search, my go-to AI tool, and my #1 research companion. A true game-changer for me. (Learn more)

👉 View my full stack.

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(2/3) How I can help you 🤝

Are you a founder looking to grow your business without breaking the bank? If so, I’ve invested in a company (Athyna) that can help you find incredible talent and build out your global team in less than 5 days. Their product, service, and worldwide talent pool are just amazing (and so affordable). Learn more here ↗

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(3/3) ICYMI ✨

If you’re new, not yet a subscriber, or just plain missed it, here are three of the most recent editions.

• 100 books to help you Grow: The Power of the Paperback, a Database of the Top 100, and a Personal Curation

• How CommandBar Grows: A deep dive into a new layer of the internet

• The end of the homepage, sharing the right details, boring signup screens

And that’s everything for this week’s edition. If you enjoyed reading today’s letter, feel free to forward it to someone!

Otherwise, have a fantastic weekend, and I’ll see you next time. ✌️
—Jaryd

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