South by South West
What began in 1987 as a music event has now become simply SXSW. South by Southwest, is an annual event in Austin that attracts global professionals in media and creatives for a week of networking, discovery, and industry insights. It is also a place for self-congratulatory moments and self-promos. Nevertheless it is place that has ideas and opportunities. In short, I would still recommend a visit.
Scott Galloway’s talk at SXSW 2025 is no longer on YouTube
For some strange reason, his video has been made private. But no worries. I took notes when I watched it first. Scott Galloway teaches Marketing at the Stern School in New York but is better known for his podcasts. He opens the talks with either a risqué joke or by announcing that he has 300 slides and 52 minutes (in that vein) and gets going with a few data points. He makes his predictions and will run through the list a year later to show us how many predictions he got right. To be fair, he is also equally upfront about all the predictions he has got wrong.
His talk is often raw to the point of being crass and liberally sprinkled with data points that have nothing to do with the business setting. This year’s talk was no exception. And there is a ton of trivia thrown in eg Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia is personally worth more than Intel or even Boeing.
- 1/3 men under age 30 has a girlfriend and 2/3 women in the same age bracket has a boy friend.
- 8% teens are addicted to alcohol but 24% are addicted to social media.
- The incremental increase since 2001 in the number of deaths of despair, drunkenness, opioid addiction, self-harm and suicide for young men is more than the number who died in World War II
Some predictions
- NVIDIA and Open AI will dominate. Nvidia has grown its earnings to justify its Market Cap, because Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta have all invested heavily in their chips.
- OpenAI is a great company but over valued. Byte Dance (of TikTok fame) is undervalued.
- Meta will make the most progress in AI because 9/10 people outside of China are on a Meta platform. Think of the data they have (about you!)
- Consumers want certainty – not choice. This was the most insightful part of the talk. We spend 50 minutes every week deciding what to watch on Netflix. TikTok is the opposite. They are one channel and they know what you want and will show you only that. That gives back time.
- Expect Shein to do an IPO. They offer 7000 new styles every day and make $2mn per employee while Zara makes $344 per employee. They do 100 new styles per day. Traditional retail does 100 new styles per week.
