Moving on after the election

You can’t really publish a newsletter this week and not have some observation on the impact of the election.  I am a progressive-leaning centrist; I am disappointed in the results.  It was a very close race — a ~1% change in 3 swing states would have resulted in a different outcome.  The Democrats have a lot of work to do to connect with the voters they have lost.  I don’t want to talk about policy and issues, though.  I want to talk about the state of public discourse.

The Left and Centrist Media Vacuum

Media, politics, and money have become deeply intertwined, particularly on the conservative side of the spectrum. Donald Trump owns DJT, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and Wall Street Journal unabashedly support Trump and the Republican Party, and Elon Musk’s X amplifies right-wing narratives without hesitation. 

The right has weaponized all media — traditional outlets like cable news and print, and newer platforms like social media and podcasts.  Right-leaning voices are particularly prominent on newer media like podcasts and Twitch; the integration of politics, media, and donor money is seamless and strategic.

And you can’t blame the right.  They looked at the landscape, considered all the segments and levers, and took advantage of what was there to advance their interests.  It has been very very strategic.  And technology money and technology billionaires have played a prominent role.

In progressive and centrist circles, there’s been a seeming reluctance to embrace the mixing of media, money, and politics.  Commenters call out bias, advocate for a politically neutral press, and wish for a world where money is out of politics and media is free of influence.  But that’s not the world we live in.   

As Elon and others have done, the tech billionaires with a centrist or progressive lean need to pile into media.  There are some who have modest presences — Mark Cuban is active, but he is relying on other media networks to carry his voice; his reach is a fraction of Elon’s or Trump’s.  Steve Ballmer has tried to push neutral data-driven information into the discourse, and USAFacts has great info, but it lacks carriage — I’ve yet to see someone share a USAFacts story in my feed or email me a USAFacts story.  Benioff has toyed with Time but is apparently retreating, and Time was a legacy asset anyway.  Bezos took the WaPost out of play.

It’s time for leaders who believe in centrist and progressive ideals to invest in media. Not just facts, but stories that resonate, platforms that engage, and products that amplify progressive and centrist voices.  We can’t let public discourse be dominated by one-sided megaphones.

Excel and AI

Based on the election results, we've already seen a huge stock market bump. As everyone else, I am actively considering my investment deployment strategy for the next four years.

I am creating a spreadsheet — a Monte Carlo simulation of a portfolio of stocks.  As variables, I am using policy levers the new administration might pull and imagining how they might affect different sectors.  For instance, relaxing the Biden AI Executive Order might be great for the tech sector, or aggressively pursuing deportation might harm construction companies.  It is not a complicated model; I could do it myself, but that is tedious, and a million people must have already made and published Monte Carlo models on the net, so AI should be great at doing this.  

This is totally in Microsoft’s wheelhouse.  I’m a Windows365 customer, and I keep reading about all kinds of new Copilot features, including Excel features, so I imagine Excel will be all over this — it has always done a great job making complex analytics simple.  So I fire up Excel, but there is no Copilot anywhere, no menu item, no ribbon button, no teaser to enable Copilot, no nothing.

No problem. I head to Microsoft’s Copilot site.  I ask Copilot to make a spreadsheet for me, only to learn “I can't create the spreadsheet directly for you, but I'd be happy to help you with the steps and tips to create one on your own.”.  That is disappointing.  I am undeterred, however.   The great thing about Microsoft Copilot is that there are so many things with that name.  One of them must work! Next I try Edge, it has a Copilot sidebar.   Nope, it also won’t create a spreadsheet.

OK maybe I wanted Microsoft365 Copilot.  Originally, this Copilot was only available in enterprise accounts, but now the site says I can sign up directly for $20 a month.  And maybe it will be just part of Microsoft365 soon?   Except no, I can’t use it, it is indeed only available in an enterprise account.   

Finally, I see I have to sign up for Copilot Pro.   Signing up for this is a total cluster of authentication and re-authentication and redirects, and it finally fails in Safari.  I can complete it in Edge, and it sends me to the web version of Excel, where Copilot is now visible.  Except again, it won’t create the spreadsheet for me, but just gives me advice.

At this point, after quitting the Excel desktop app and restarting, Copilot is visible in the app.   But again it won’t create the spreadsheet, it just gives me advice.

ChatGPT and Claude do better

I also asked ChatGPT to make this spreadsheet using the ChatGPT desktop app.  And it complied immediately, creating a spreadsheet for me to download.  The spreadsheet was incomplete — it had the structure and tabs of a model, and it appears to have calculated some Monte Carlo results and dumped them into the spreadsheet, but there were no formulas in the spreadsheet.  I asked for some revisions, which ChatGPT happily did, but it never quite got the formulas in place.  So, I give ChatGPT an A for effort, even if the results were a C.   I suspect if I asked it for the same solution in Python, it would have done an A+ job. 

I then asked Claude to make the same spreadsheet, and Claude did a great job — except it produced a Python app, not a spreadsheet.  A really good and complete Python app!  I asked Claude again to create a spreadsheet, and Claude produced not a full spreadsheet, but a set of snippets to paste into a blank spreadsheet, which looked very complete.  Claude gets an A for effort and a B+ for results. 

This is Microsoft’s birthright

Microsoft has done a great job with Github Copilot.   It slides right into VSCode and is an immediate aid to coders — it fits right into the tool they are using.  It watches what you are doing and proactively suggests solutions.  This is a great model for AI — go where the users are, and make their existing tasks easier, faster, better.   A strong incumbent like Microsoft should work this strategy hard, and with Github Copilot, they are doing exactly that.

Copilot for Excel should work like this as well.  It is not there yet.

• Copilot signup should be right in Excel. Don't make me wade through the morass of websites to figure it out.
• It is confusing to wade through everything called Copilot (and did we need a Copilot Pro already?)  Is it a standalone product or a feature?   Which website do I visit to get definitive guidance?  Microsoft has been moving fast to deliver Copilot, I suspect this will get cleaned up.
• The ties to Edge for signup and use are a hurdle and distraction.  You shouldn’t have to change your browser to use Copilot.
• Hiding the best features behind an enterprise license is short-sighted.  Back in the day, individuals got excited about Excel and drug it in the back door at work, which eventually resulted in broader enterprise sales. Today, someone who wants to be a hero at work is pushed to ChatGPT or Claude.
• Don’t just tell me how to build a spreadsheet.  Build it for me.  Don’t make me do all the tedious construction tasks — that is what computers are for!

This is all moving fast, and Microsoft has been incredibly nimble for a large organization, I love the attempts they are making to integrate AI in their apps.  I just want more.

Automotive Valuations

Just a short note, post-election, $TSLA is now worth over $1T, 4x the valuation of the next largest automaker, Toyota. This seems a little crazy, but there is obviously widespread belief that the incumbent ICE automakers are in deep trouble. This also creates a huge challenge for Tesla itself – it has to grow revenues at a tremendous pace to justify this capitalization and to keep its RSU-compensated employees happy, and it has to navigate the complexity of trade wars and tariffs ahead of us.