Financial Modeler's Corner
00:44:37 · Peter Fuller
[00:44:37] S1: But I I think so. Yeah. I I continue to be confused about how how bad Copilot is given how strong the models are that are powering Copilot. Right? But I think Microsoft does have that innovator's dilemma problem now. And let's just take Excel. I I always compare Excel with coding. And one big difference, I think, between those domains is coding was really nicely set up actually even before ChatGPT. Coding was really nicely set up for AI to come along. Right? You had IDs. You had a really nice collaboration environment. You have diffs. You have git. You have version control. All of these things are really important if you're gonna start working meaningfully with someone or something else. In this case, that something else is AI. Excel is just it's just missing all of it. And and that's that's a huge problem. So, you know, now if you go into the Tracelight web app and you say, here's an Excel. I want you to make the following 25 changes to this Excel. What you'll get back is you'll get a diff. You'll get, okay, here's, you know, here's a overlay kind of thing of what the file was like before. Here's what the file is like now. And as you build up these diffs, you can then build up versions of what you're working on. You can roll back and you do all of these things. And, yeah, I I know I know there is some versioning, etcetera, and and diffing, but it's completely insufficient in my view in Excel. So, yes, it's Copilot being slightly disappointing, but it's also the product right around, you know, I think that some big changes have to be made to make it really nicely set up to work with very powerful agents. I think they have a bit of a problem there.
00:46:31 · Paul Barnhurst, Ian Schnoor, Peter Fuller
[00:46:31] S2: It'll be interesting to watch. I think there's some good points there. And I've said to get what they really need, you almost need that kinda online whole new environment because it's 40 years old to truly have that modern innovative platform. But given their constraints they've had, they've done an amazing job in my opinion overall on Excel. Obviously, AI side, there are some challenges. [00:46:52] S3: When you're a $5,000,000,000,000 company and you have seven or 8,000,000,000 customers, We should all have such problems one day, but, you know, it's a whole different set of criteria and internal machinations, and it just obviously is different. And you have to be careful about people all over the world using things. I didn't even realize until recently how many people are not even working on Excel 365 yet. I mean, they're still using older versions of Excel that don't even have... So there are lots and lots of things that factor in when you are, you know, the large player that the whole world relies on. But that said, I mean... But that's why there's opportunity for Tracelight and others to take advantage of speed and nimbleness, and, you're obviously doing a fantastic job with that. So, anyway, I'll thank you for spending time with us on an evening, obviously, as busy as you are. [00:47:42] S2: I think we'll go ahead and kinda wrap up here. But before we do, any last thoughts? Anything you wanna share? Any thoughts about the future, modeling? Anything you wanna say to our audience here? [00:47:53] S1: Thoughts about the future.
00:47:53 · Peter Fuller, Paul Barnhurst
[00:47:53] S1: Thoughts about the future. [00:47:55] S2: Or wherever you wanna go. It's up to you. Just kinda last thoughts.
00:47:57 · Peter Fuller
[00:47:57] S1: One thing that I think about and talk about most days, you can be quite scared, right, looking at how this stuff is evolving. And it is quite a scary experience, I guess, if your career to this point has, you know, your unique, you know, value. Right? You've been the best at writing the formulas and building these complex models. I can imagine that it's very scary than watching LLNs, you know, the curve is just like this. Right? And even if they're not past you today, they probably will be past you quite soon. Right? And I totally get that, but I think people, your viewers, our users should all just be tremendously excited about what the future holds. Right? Their jobs will be different, but the amount of value that you'll be able to add in the world is now... It's just, like, increasing exponentially. And I think by this time next year, if your job had been building big Excel financial models and then handing that over to a customer, I think your job will be building those models, and then that becomes code and then that becomes a persistent part of how your customer is operating and, like, just the amount of value adding to them is so much greater. So I am very, very optimistic. Right? Even about the users that most of the rest of, like, Twitter, if you read it, everyone's like, oh, these, you know, these people are so cooked or whatever because the other lens are doing their work. I just completely disagree. That's how I feel about our users, and I hope that's how how your viewers feel to you. I love it.
00:49:22 · Paul Barnhurst, Ian Schnoor, Peter Fuller, Giles Male
[00:49:22] S2: Love it. Well, thank you. Really enjoyed it. Appreciate you carving out some of your evening for us. And, Giles, anything you wanna add before we say goodbye? [00:49:31] S3: No. Exciting to chat with you. I'm thrilled and rooting for you and excited to hear how things go. So thanks for spending time with us. [00:49:38] S1: Awesome. Thanks for having me. [00:49:39] S4: Echo that. It's... I'm happy you're... You guys are doing so well. It's been really interesting just delving into your mind and your outlook a little bit, and there's some things I probably wouldn't have thought of but make a lot of sense. So so, yeah, wish you all the best with it. [00:49:52] S2: Well, thank you so much. We really appreciate you carving out some time. Take care, Pete. Thank you.