OP #280: Inspiration to Implementation

Author

Darren Herman
December 17, 2024

I cannot believe it’s December 17th. So much happened this year. I wrote close to 40 OP letters, hosted 3 full Silicon Alley Sports events, held a Boston-based OP dinner, exited Varsity Brands for $4.75B, attended Shoptalk and Creativity with a Conscience, appeared on the Karma School of Business podcast amongst others, went to 14 live NBA games including Knicks playoffs and Celtics NBA Finals, enjoyed the US Open tennis with some of you, finally saw Dispatch live, and did countless other things.

It’s time to wind down and take my yearly breather as we head into the New Year. This will be my last OP until 2025. In years past, I write about trends or forecasts. This year, I concentrated on Artificial Intelligence and am nudging you to start experimenting. More on that as you continue reading.

Before you scroll down below, here are some fun articles that I came across this week:

And a few topical pieces that really stood out to me over the course of the week:

💡 Amara’s Law: we overestimate the impact of technology in the short-term and underestimate the effect in the long run.  Apparently Bill Gate also made a similar statement, more recently than Roy Amara, so it’s also known as Gates Law.

📈 My friend Dan Frommer, author of The New Consumer, released his latest Consumer Trends: 2025 report. He spends a bunch of time discussing TikTok Shop, dry January, and the categorization of fun food vs. fuel food. Dan wrote a good synopsis here and it’s been covered elsewhere too.

✨ I’ve done a lot of thinking and tinkering around GenAI.  In this McKinsey piece, they focus not on the technical impact, but rather, the organizational impact to get the most from GenAI in your business.  It’s a solid piece from earlier this year in an area that often goes overlooked. And if you thought that McK piece was good, here is one they wrote on AI agents.

💰 I do not usually write about criminal activities but this piece caught my attention where someone underreported capital gains after selling crypto and now faces two years of jail time. I share this because I know a lot of OP readers have crypto. Be safe out there!

👩‍💻 The 12 Days of OpenAI is a solid marketing program with product front and center. During the 12 Days of OpenAI, inspired by the 12 days of Christmas, they are unveiling a new feature or product evolution each day. It’s nicely done and many of us marketers could learn a lot from it.

I want to thank YOU for subscribing to the OP and for those who reached out directly to me, it’s been awesome getting to know you. Any OP subscriber can reach out at any time and I’ll respond when I can… I love getting to know who these letters reach.

Happy holidays to you and yours… see you in the New Year.
Darren

Artificial Intelligence – From Inspiration to Implementation in 2025

Each year in The Operating Partner, I usually talk about a handful of trends I think will catch on in the following year. But this year, I’m narrowing it down to just one: Artificial Intelligence.

Right now reminds me of the mid-1990s, when I’d come home after high school, head over to Borders, buy an HTML or Photoshop book, and teach myself how to build on the World Wide Web. It was all self-directed learning—just me and my Quadra 630 (and later, my PowerMac G3)—until I finally interned at i33 Communications and worked at Conducive and learned from some of the best.

Back then, it felt like I was an outlier. While my friends were out chasing women or shooting hoops, I was flipping through thousands of pages of books, figuring out everything I could about desktop publishing and the Internet. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was exciting.

That passion eventually turned into a little business. As a high schooler, I started making websites for small businesses in Westchester County. I didn’t know how to run a business, but I figured it out as I went along. Every time I mastered a skill, the tools evolved—what took me hours in Photoshop one day could suddenly be done with a click of a button thanks to a new filter or plugin. It was frustrating but also exhilarating, forcing me to constantly learn and adapt. I even purchased my own first car and had a custom NY State license plate, “WEB DSGN.”  Yes, I was “that” guy.

Looking back, I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. They gave me a baseline understanding of how computers, software, and the web work—a foundation that’s been invaluable ever since.

Fast forward to 2024, and this year has felt strikingly similar to 1995. Replace desktop publishing and the World Wide Web with Artificial Intelligence, and the parallels are uncanny. The same energy, curiosity, and rapid evolution are all here.

But there’s a key difference. The baseline understanding of AI is spreading faster than the web or desktop publishing ever did. Why? Because we now have tools like YouTube, blogs, Udemy, and Meetups—resources that simply didn’t exist back then. In 1995, streaming video over a 28.8kbps modem wasn’t even a dream; today, learning is faster and more accessible than ever.

If you’ve been reading The Operating Partner, you know I’m a big believer in AI and its potential to enhance processes. Sure, there are skeptics—but I’m not one of them. And if you’re with me on this, there’s no better time to jump in than now.

Some of my portfolio company executives are already mandating their teams spend 30 minutes a week “playing” with AI tools. You might scoff—what can you possibly learn in 30 minutes? But over a month, that’s two hours, and for someone who hasn’t touched a single tool, that’s a massive head start.

Back in the ’90s, I didn’t need to be a hardcore tech expert. My strength was understanding how the pieces fit together—the application layer. That’s where the real magic happens, and that’s where I encourage you to focus today. You don’t need to dive deep into the technical minutiae of why one large language model is better than another or obsess over GPU specs. That’ll all change in 12 months anyway. What matters is knowing how to apply the tools to solve real problems.

Start experimenting. Pick a process you want to improve—whether it’s generating content with GenAI, creating AI-based videos, turning blog posts into podcasts with NotebookLM, coding faster with Copilot, or building platforms with no-code tech—and get your hands dirty. No one’s stopping you.

Every experiment you try is a step forward. Each one teaches you something new, giving you an edge in a world that’s moving faster than ever.

This was my playbook in the ’90s. It worked then, and I’m following it again now. I hope you do too. Let's learn a ton together in 2025.

If you are looking for a place to start with AI, check out this LinkedIn post by Conor Grennan as he breaks down his own AI stack.

The below links are articles that I read during the past week. I am sharing them because I think they are interesting. I may not agree with everything in every article. If you come across an article that you might think I or the OP community would like, I encourage you to reach out and share it. I reserve the right to select whether or not it gets shared in the OP.

Thank you for subscribing to the OP. If you received this note from someone else and you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe here for free. Happy holidays to you and yours.

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