Collaboration software has an n4 problem.

· Bits and Bobs 9/21/26
  • Collaboration software has an n4 problem.
    • To collaborate with someone else, you need to be in the same silo.
    • The difficulty of finding a silo everyone you want to collaborate with is already in scales with the square of number of participants (n).
      • "OK, so we'll use Signal? Oh wait, Linda doesn't use that. iMessage? Oh wait Bob has an Android. I guess… WhatsApp?"
    • And then having the relevant data/context in the silo per person scales with the square of the number of participants, too.
    • n2n2 = n4
    • This is a massive headwind.
    • Even if there were a piece of software that did precisely what would be most useful for that use case, you'd have to overcome a hurricane force coordination headwind for it to be viable.
      • Everyone just uses the lowest common denominator: WhatsApp and Google Docs.
      • You might erroneously conclude that no one wants this… but it's more that it's not possible, so no one even thinks to dream that it might be possible.
    • So the bespoke collaboration software is possible to exist, but not viable.
    • So no one bothered creating it in the first place.
    • Now, LLMs can create custom software on demand… but they can't solve this coordination problem.
    • An app would have to be better by 1000x than WhatsApp to be viable to coordinate with in today's physics.

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