Shopping for AI Shovels: The MosaicML Acquisition

Whenever a disruptive technology becomes available, there is a mad dash as every company rushes to incorporate it as quickly as possible. The race makes sense: new technologies equal new opportunities for better profits. The interesting thing is that a company's starting position with their original product ends up being the most important thing for determining what profits each company captures.

Said simply, it is better to have a huge head start than to sprint the hardest. 

One of my favorite strategy frameworks to help grok this is a theory from 1997 called Rugged Landscapes. Picture a mountain, where the summit is the most profits available to a firm. 

Companies navigate the mountain by changing their coordinates on the X and Z competitive axis. However, a market is not a single mountain to climb, it is a rugged landscape.