Remember Quibi? It was a streaming platform of TV shows, where they were filmed in portrait mode instead of landscape, and the episodes were 5 minutes instead of 30.

Their pitch was basically: "Nobody has time to sit down and watch a whole TV show anymore, that's why the short form content like Instagram and TikTok is doing so well - we're going to make TV shows to compete with those platforms that you can watch while you're waiting in line for a coffee!"

They got like billions of dollars in runway because the idea resonated so deeply with the boardrooms full of executives that they were pitching to, but the idea was completely dead on arrival. Normal (non-career-obsessed) people actually have a TON of free time. They chain-smoke entire seasons of shitty reality TV in one sitting. They plop down on the weekend and watch sports for hours on end, not on a phone, but on an actual TV in their living room.

I definitely agree that a ton of these AI use cases seem hyper-tailored to the executives running these companies and the investors that are backing them, and may not resonate at all with the broader population nor lead to widespread adoption.

Quibi was 5 years too early. Vertical micro dramas are now an $8B market, just exceeded box office in China and expanding rapidly elsewhere.

have you heard about second screen content

If you've ever wanted insight into what C-suite is doing all day, it's this.

And make restaurant reservations! We also make restaurant reservations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42806755

This is what always happen when your general purpose tool needs to be marketed through use cases.