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Comment by lnkdinsuxs | Hacker News Reader

> Are they talking about using it as a consumer?

Consumer. Their usecases seem pretty valid - the landscaper is using it to drum up more business, has agents responding to incoming emails and texts, just like my dentist and barber.

The cashier uses GrokBot to transcribe notes to her manager. Her company has a very bad inventory app (I don't want to name names but it's a very large nationwide chain) so she literally exports inventory into an excel and feeds it into GrokBot as a way to run queries.

I can see nothing wrong in them just like I could see no wrong in buying properties and flipping them for a profit because there was so much demand at that time.

If you weren't buying houses 2003-2009, you have no idea how crazy it was. People would buy homes unseen in Olathe, KS.

It's likely just me but it just feels eerily familiar. I hope we are all wrong this time around.

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uh, there's a huge difference between using an AI agent(s) to make yourself more efficient in your line of work, v.s. buying leveraged properties valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Let's get the real indicator here: how full are the parking lots in the Bay Area these days?

Both have zero ROI in a rational market.

Why would a rational market assign zero ROI to a landscaper managing their communications more efficiently?

because, in a rational market, if a competitive edge is gained from a 3rd party service (GrokBot) that won't refuse to sell to the landscaper's competition, then the landscaper's competition will also use GrokBot the same way where that competitive edge is no longer there.

In other words, all the landscapers are equally efficient and unless they collude on pricing, the then pass on savings to their customers.

Which means any landscaper who doesn't use "GrokBot" will lose customers to those who do and have lower prices. For every landscaper, other than the first one to adopt "GrokBot" and lower their prices, there is ROI.

correct. As long as one landscaper has an edge, they will likely have a ROI for that window of time. However, when you calculate ROI, you don't do so over weeks or months, but rather years unless the specific job itself is very short lived.

For back office operations, one calculates ROI over 5 years or so as upfront investments are rather large (less for turnkey SaaS but that's a whole another discussion and not what's happening here. Here the owner is building their own solution).

Your theory is sound. What you're missing is in a rational market, 3rd party edge only provides an initial boost until the rest catch up. That's why companies invest in in-house talent, so they own and control it.

I think one of the things you're missing here is that landscaping (and which grocery store you go to, and which barber you go to) is not really a "rational" market.

People stick with service providers for a long time. The lead that the landscaper in your example is building now actually compounds over time, regardless of whether competitors adopt grok bot in the future or not?

In your 2008 example, making a profit was contingent on cashing out (selling your property). Whereas the landscaper is expanding their book of business and increasing their future cash flows.

Unless you think there will suddenly be some sort of rug-pull in his ability to use AI tools to manage his comms, or a sudden change in long-standing consumer behavior around landscaping services... I don't understand how you can in good faith think these economic scenarios are similarly risky? What debt/leverage is the landscaper taking on by using grokbot?

Great questions!

> The lead that the landscaper in your example is building now actually compounds over time, regardless of whether competitors adopt grok bot in the future or not?

You are conceptually right except that you are conflating cost of service with a business relationship.

If my business relationship offers me the same cost of service for the same service as their lower priced competition does, it's then not even a thing for me to worry about. They are completely financially fungible (plus the value of the business relationship).

Assume I work with landscaper A while landscaper B is using grokbot to be more efficient.

If my business relationship with landscaper A is strong, I will happen to mention to them what landscaper B is doing and if landscaper A values our relationship, they will try their best to do so as well or comp my service accordingly.

There are other factors like churn, overhead, regulation, licensing etc that I am happy to discuss in more detail.

Look at the graveyard of ChatGPT wrappers. Same concept.

This is why a grandparent observed that amortized ROI that depends on a 3rd party service becomes 0 - in capitalism, an arbitrage opportunity is competed away.

This is why companies build their own in-house talent for their core competencies - so that their ROI on their core competencies doesn't become 0.

This is also why sama and Dario are trying to regulate OSS models - because those are a direct attack to their core competency and if left unchecked would cause headwinds to their ROI,

In 2008, your landscaper went bankrupt because they took out a sub prime mortgage.

How is your landscaper going to go bankrupt in 2027 because they're using grokbot?

I forgot another source of ROI. As each landscaper reduces their prices their addressable market (people able to afford landscaping) expands. By saving time using AI, they are able to serve more of that market. So the actual ROI will still be positive.

And keep in mind this is one market with relatively undifferentiated players (landscaping services) that we are talking about. Markets where operators have more pricing power will be even better off.

If we follow your argument to its logical conclusion, any technical or capital investment by a landscaper is pointless. They may as well use manual lawnmowers, rakes instead of leafblowers, and go from job to job on bicycles instead of pickup trucks.

> By saving time using AI, they are able to serve more of that market. So the actual ROI will still be positive

Not really. Most services and labor isn't elastic. For one, you cannot service more than a dozen people a day if each service takes 30m. To scale, you will then need to hire more people who will want to work on a salary and will demand healthcare and days off.

But if AI saves you 30 minutes a day you can serve an additional client.

if the additional client is literally next door and you don't need a break, refuel or your batteries didn't run out of charge, yes

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