MBI Deep Dives

MBI Deep Dives

Owning the Hill

Satya Nadella spent part of last weekend writing a think piece on X titled “A frontier without an ecosystem is not stable”. I mostly nodded along while reading the piece, but there was also a lot of cynicism from many corners about his prescription of not mortgaging your IP to

Meta's Myriad Questions

A couple of days ago, “SouthernValue” tagged me in the below tweet: Can we get a @borrowed_ideas and @evrgn11112231 podcast or spaces to discuss $META state of affairs? New regulation, AI model delays, internal chaos, tokenmaxxing then unmaxxing, agentic business prospects, Neocloud prospects (and willingness / timing) … lots to discuss.

The Geography of Time

Programming Note: As a reminder, every Sunday, I write pieces that are predominantly based on personal experiences which may or may not be loosely connected with investing. If you are reading MBI Deep Dives everyday, I think it would be rather useful for my readers to understand my personal lens

Adobe's Continued Deceleration

If you’re on X (formerly known as “twitter”), you may be under the impression that Adobe’s growth has accelerated in FY 2Q’26 as I noticed quite a few posts mentioning how total ARR has finally accelerated last quarter. Unfortunately, Adobe’s ARR included $480 million from the

FICO: Capital Allocation, Management Incentives, and Valuation

Programming Note: This is the final part of my FICO Series. Last month, I announced that I would start publishing my Deep Dives as a series of posts rather than one single post. Having now tried that format with FICO, I’ll be reverting back to single posts for future

Automation's Asymptote: Part 2

Yesterday's piece ended on a question I could not quite resolve: it can be simultaneously true that humans remain in the loop and that the economics of being in the loop deteriorate. Shipper's frame-and-framer argument gave me a philosophical reason to doubt the automation

Automation's Asymptote

Anthropic launched “Claude Fable 5” yesterday which is the much anticipated “Mythos-class” model. Anthropic was already leading in most benchmark with its Opus 4.8 model, but Fable 5 created a bit more distance from its competitors. Anthropic’s pace of model release even when its setting the bar

FICO: The Contestable Monopoly?

This is part-3 of my FICO series. In Part 1, I traced the company’s history through the 2018-2025 pricing-power era and pushed back on the popular narrative that FICO’s monopoly was simply gifted to it by the 1995 GSE decision. In Part 2, I went

Veeva 1Q'26: Strong Present, Patient Future

Programming Note: Some of you may have missed my announcement in my last post that I would be taking a couple of weeks break and reached out to see if everything is okay. Thank you for your concern, and I am back to daily posting schedule. Just a small note

Airbnb's Soul Search Beyond Homes

Programming Note: I am going to take a Summer Break for a couple of weeks. I am actually traveling to Bangladesh to spend some time with family after three and half years. I expect to start posting daily on June 8th onward. Yesterday, Booking CEO Glenn Fogel appeared on JP