I have had the good fortune (or curse) to survive several recessions and market meltdowns over my career – Black Monday in 1987, Dot.com bubble burst in early 2000s, the housing bubble in 2008, COVID crash in 2020 and many more.
While none of them were fun, I have noticed a common pattern – most of our industry tends to turn cautious and retrench when actually it is a great time to catch up on missed and upcoming opportunities. And with lowered Wall Street expectations there is often a window of opportunity to invest more in R&D, data centers and other assets to grow your footprint.
As we look at the current Wall Street meltdown and signs of recession, let's look at opportunities we missed in the last five years, and what is plausible in the next five.
A look at the recent past
Look at how many applications you would have struggled to sell in 2020, but you could have sold since to hundreds of customers if only you or you partners had developed them
Think of how much had changed in daily life thanks to COVID, Ukraine war and massive digital transformations – telemedicine in healthcare, product delivery and returns in retail, mobile banking, real estate virtual open houses and digital paperwork, EV charging and billing, CPQ for Industrials which bundle product, monitoring, spare parts, financing and other elements. And many more
Going beyond the western world you could sell even more if you had localized for India, Cambodia, UAE, Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil and so many other markets which are growing much quicker than western economies. Just look at places hyperscalers have recently opened data centers as starting points.
These opportunities are still open. Not only will you be building unique transactional capability, you will be building domain expertise and operational data which will also allow you to develop unique AI use cases.
A look at the coming future
While the Trump 2.0 economy is a bit bumpy. it provides a great landscape to run scenarios. His tariffs will lead to make and hire more in the US. In the first 2 months, in spite of all the noise, it has already picked up commitments for $1.7 trillion from MNCs like Honda, TSMC, Apple and others. These will be next gen facilities – lots of automation – AI, robotics, sensors, exoskeletons, GPS etc. and AI savvy workers . Many changes coming to fintech, defense, pharma, mining, space, agribusiness and other sectors.
Don’t just think Agentic AI, look at occupations as verticals and convergence with humanoid robots, UAVs, drones etc. Solutions you could put together with a new breed of partners. Don’t just think Agentic AI for SG&A functions, think of CoS line items and partnering with customers for unique vertical operational data. Look at the AI use cases some of the leading Wall Street firms are dreaming up, filing patents for and even having their CEOs actively involved in the visioning.
Trump 2.0 is also turning the world upside down. In the US, growth will be regional as states compete to attract MNC investments. Ukraine, Israel, the Middle East, Greenland? No need to speculate – most vendors have a long way to go to catch up to even SAP’s 60 or so country localizations.
Also rethink ecosystems. Some SIs are starting to use LLMs to bring efficiencies to their own DevOps, testing, data conversion etc. Time to demand more from them so they move away from their addiction to the "school bus" model. Need more partners with product design, logistics, shop floor and vertical operations domain expertise. New more partners in non-English, non-Western markets. Also think anew of customers as "partners" for their domain expertise and even for licensing of their operational data to anonymize and train your models.
Sridhar Vembu of Zoho recently tweeted a perspective on what is ailing the software job market – “AI is not taking away jobs (not yet anyway)” he says. I agree with him - software talent is not the constraint. Unique domain expertise and data is what’s scarce.
This is no time to retrench. It’s time to think much bigger and very differently than we have in previous slowdowns
A time to reap, a time to sow
I have had the good fortune (or curse) to survive several recessions and market meltdowns over my career – Black Monday in 1987, Dot.com bubble burst in early 2000s, the housing bubble in 2008, COVID crash in 2020 and many more.
While none of them were fun, I have noticed a common pattern – most of our industry tends to turn cautious and retrench when actually it is a great time to catch up on missed and upcoming opportunities. And with lowered Wall Street expectations there is often a window of opportunity to invest more in R&D, data centers and other assets to grow your footprint.
As we look at the current Wall Street meltdown and signs of recession, let's look at opportunities we missed in the last five years, and what is plausible in the next five.
A look at the recent past
Look at how many applications you would have struggled to sell in 2020, but you could have sold since to hundreds of customers if only you or you partners had developed them
Think of how much had changed in daily life thanks to COVID, Ukraine war and massive digital transformations – telemedicine in healthcare, product delivery and returns in retail, mobile banking, real estate virtual open houses and digital paperwork, EV charging and billing, CPQ for Industrials which bundle product, monitoring, spare parts, financing and other elements. And many more
Going beyond the western world you could sell even more if you had localized for India, Cambodia, UAE, Kenya, Nigeria, Brazil and so many other markets which are growing much quicker than western economies. Just look at places hyperscalers have recently opened data centers as starting points.
These opportunities are still open. Not only will you be building unique transactional capability, you will be building domain expertise and operational data which will also allow you to develop unique AI use cases.
A look at the coming future
While the Trump 2.0 economy is a bit bumpy. it provides a great landscape to run scenarios. His tariffs will lead to make and hire more in the US. In the first 2 months, in spite of all the noise, it has already picked up commitments for $1.7 trillion from MNCs like Honda, TSMC, Apple and others. These will be next gen facilities – lots of automation – AI, robotics, sensors, exoskeletons, GPS etc. and AI savvy workers . Many changes coming to fintech, defense, pharma, mining, space, agribusiness and other sectors.
Don’t just think Agentic AI, look at occupations as verticals and convergence with humanoid robots, UAVs, drones etc. Solutions you could put together with a new breed of partners. Don’t just think Agentic AI for SG&A functions, think of CoS line items and partnering with customers for unique vertical operational data. Look at the AI use cases some of the leading Wall Street firms are dreaming up, filing patents for and even having their CEOs actively involved in the visioning.
Trump 2.0 is also turning the world upside down. In the US, growth will be regional as states compete to attract MNC investments. Ukraine, Israel, the Middle East, Greenland? No need to speculate – most vendors have a long way to go to catch up to even SAP’s 60 or so country localizations.
Also rethink ecosystems. Some SIs are starting to use LLMs to bring efficiencies to their own DevOps, testing, data conversion etc. Time to demand more from them so they move away from their addiction to the "school bus" model. Need more partners with product design, logistics, shop floor and vertical operations domain expertise. New more partners in non-English, non-Western markets. Also think anew of customers as "partners" for their domain expertise and even for licensing of their operational data to anonymize and train your models.
Sridhar Vembu of Zoho recently tweeted a perspective on what is ailing the software job market – “AI is not taking away jobs (not yet anyway)” he says. I agree with him - software talent is not the constraint. Unique domain expertise and data is what’s scarce.
This is no time to retrench. It’s time to think much bigger and very differently than we have in previous slowdowns
March 11, 2025 in Agentic AI, Global and Vertical extensions, Globalization and Technology, Humanoid Robots, Industry Commentary | Permalink