The Contrarian Bet on a Digital Agency

Yeah, I'll let you define the Lindy effect though, Will, because you did it much better than I did in the pre call.

Okay. Okay. So the Lindy effect is a, this is a great framework. It's the idea that if something things die a slower death than you think they will. Brands, products, consumer behaviors.

Google's, you know, doing really well and you know, neck and neck there with ChatGPT. But let's say it actually kind of loses to ChatGPT. There will likely be a 20 year decline of Google as all of this entrenched consumer behavior of just going to Google and searching for, you know, the, the restoration business near me or whatever unwinds or declines.

So, so I, I think there's actually a, you know, a, a mathematical equation, if you, if you like, about the Lindy effect where however long a business has, has been alive, it will be alive for that much, that long again. So if Google's been around here for 20, 25 years, it is bound to be around for another 20, 25 years. Another key sort of insight of the Lindy effect is the longer things have been…

For a digital business.

So Google ain't going anywhere. Even if we give, you know, as much benefit of the doubt as we can to ChatGPT that it moves quicker, more consumers go to ChatGPT than we think. Google is still going to have its magnetism for a long time and continued living a long time.

So that's, that's the Lindy effect. How'd I do?

Yeah, excellent. Glad again, glad that you did it, not me. So right. This is real. And first of all, I would say do not bet against Google in this game at all because really they're bringing all of their horsepower to it and, and they're, they're good at bringing their horsepower to things and succeeding.

But, but applying it to my specific situation, this was another thing that, you know, I considered A lot as I did this, which is again, our agency might be out of business in a few years. There's risk here. Right? Like I know that. And so it might, it's not going to be tomorrow and it, it almost certainly isn't going to be next year. And it is because of the slow change here.

And so there's a number of things to think about to make this real as people are thinking about the Lindy effect or something else. Right. So, so you take. First of all, the hype around ChatGPT far exceeds. Exceeds the reality.

So when you look at actually how much search, people's search on things like businesses near me has changed. It is very, very small. It's going to grow. And I'm not going to sit here pretending that ChatGPT might not completely take it over within a number of years.