Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your weekly tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

Here’s the plan:

• Tech News Takes — super-short analysis and commentary

• Tool of the Week — tools you’ll find useful

• Strategy Tips — strategy nuggets (for business and life)

Instagram kicks while TikTok is down

Plus: Oakley smartglasses, Anthropic’s non-stop fundraising

⚡ Tech News Takes ⚡

Meta launching two pairs of smartglasses

• What’s up: Meta is planning to launch several new pairs of smart glasses in 2025, building on their success with the Meta Ray Bans and deepening their partnership with parent company Luxottica. One pair will be from Oakley, targeting athletes and imitating the functionality of the initial Ray Ban model (cameras and audio built in). And the second pair will be an updated Ray Ban with a built-in display in one of the lenses. Meta is apparently considering several other AI-powered consumer devices, including smart watches and camera-studded earbuds.

• So what: Forgive the pun, but this is really smart. Meta was surprised by the success of their 2023 Ray Ban, in part because of the relatively low-tech approach. Cameras and earbuds are not rocket science, especially compared to the battery life and lighting struggles of trying to put an always-on display in a lens. But now that they’ve seen that be successful, they’re doubling down on consumer devices, including the Oakley version that they are very confident they can deliver (expect splashy ads and athlete endorsements). Plus, with the updated Ray Ban, they can bite off a slightly harder problem — including a display — but benefit from 2 years of additional R&D and a customer base that’s already a bit “warmed-up”.

Instagram kicks while TikTok is down

• What’s up: Companies are making moves in response to the uncertainty around TikTok. In the last week, Bluesky and X both launched a short-form video feed. And Instagram is going a step further — offering bonuses to creators to post their content first on Instagram (from $10-50K per month according to The Information). Instagram has apparently had similar short-term incentive programs in the past, most recently in 2023.

• So what: These are all natural responses to seeing a big incumbent — TikTok — at risk. But the responses aren’t all created equal. Instagram is in the strongest position, since they already have ~2B users and can nudge even more creators and users into a thriving ecosystem full of shortform content. X and Bluesky will likely struggle with the cold start problem — how to get creators to contribute content, and how to get new users to try it out when there’s not (yet) much content there.

Google pours $1B more into Anthropic

• What’s up: Google announced another round of funding for Anthropic — OpenAI’s strongest competitor — on Tuesday. The new $1B invested follows $2B Google previously invested in the company, and Anthropic’s valuation is reportedly near $60B. Amazon, the other largest investor, has put in $8B so far.

• So what: Two interesting takeaways here. First, why raise all that money? Well, it’s the best way to train and launch better models than your competitors. And based on the way that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and others have been talking about budgets for training models (sounding concerned about “returns”; starting to exercise caution)… strong fundraising abilities might become an even more important competitive advantage. Second, this is a perfect encapsulation of Anthropic’s strategy. While OpenAI has partnered primarily with Microsoft, chased consumers via ChatGPT, etc… Anthropic has done the opposite. They’ve aimed to be neutral and interoperable (working with all the major cloud providers: AWS, Microsoft, and Google), and focusing more on enterprises than consumers.

🛠️ Tool of the Week 🛠️

For any founders or team leaders out there — I think you’ll dig this.

I found a simple, free Notion template from Sequoia. They’ve branded it as a pitch deck template for startups, helping you frame the problems and solutions that give you a reason to exist…

… but that doesn’t really do it justice...

With small changes, this could easily become a request for internal funding, or the rallying document that puts your project team on the same page.

Check it out!

And if it’s not quite what you need, you can nerd-out on other templates from our partners at Notion by going directly to notion.com/templates.

🧭 Strategy Tips 🧭

Instagram kicks while TikTok is down

Today’s strategy tip is all about switching costs.

We’ll go deeper on why Instagram is showering creators with cash, and we’ll come away with a better understanding of how to navigate switching costs like a pro.

Before we get there, let’s get introduced to the framework.

What Are Switching Costs?

Switching costs are the hurdles that make it hard for people to leave one thing for another. And they can be:

• Financial – fees to cancel, lost bonuses, etc.

• Effort based – learning new things, transferring data, etc.

• Psychological – ingrained habits, sense of loyalty, etc.

And depending on which role you play, you may want to raise them (if they’re yours), lower them (if they’re your competitor’s), or overcome them (if you’re the user).

For my visual learners, ze visual!

Ok, now let’s get back to the story about Instagram and TikTok.