Six Years at the Edge: Living Through Disruption, Building Toward Futures

Written By Modern Ancients

2019 felt like cruise control.

Then the world slammed the accelerator.

In months, companies digitized at a pace leaders once thought impossible—and the ripple effects haven’t stopped.

Shock | The year that bent time

Pandemic → Digital Tipping Point.


Executives say COVID compressed 3–4 years of digital change into months: customer interactions moved online, supply chains digitized, and new digital products jumped ahead by as much as 7 years. Rollouts that once took a year happened in weeks.

Commerce snapped online.


E-commerce’s share of global retail rose from 14% (2019) to ~17% (2020)—a leap that normally takes years. It stuck. Digital was no longer optional.

Field note: Disruption rewards teams that convert chaos into systems—not just apps.

Inflection | Algorithms in the driver’s seat

The fastest adoption in consumer tech—ever.
ChatGPT hit 100M MAUs in ~2 months, making it the fastest-growing consumer app in history. That moment normalized everyday AI.

Enterprise moved just as fast.
By 2024–25, ~65–71% of firms reported using genAI in at least one function—marketing, service operations, product, software.

And the money isn’t theoretical.
Independent IDC research (Microsoft-sponsored) finds genAI delivering ~$3.7 in ROI per $1 on average (top performers ~$10.3).

But the public mood?
A fresh Reuters/Ipsos poll (Aug 2025) shows 71% of Americans fear permanent job losses; 77% worry about deepfakes destabilizing politics.

Tension to watch: “AI as amplifier” vs. “AI as eraser.” Your edge is building products that shift work from routine to meaning.

Collision | When new tech hits old industries

Finance

  • Crypto’s whiplash: Market cap near $3T (late-2021) → >$2T erased by end-2022; FTX’s collapse left up to 1M creditors. Regulators stepped in; the EU’s MiCA became the first comprehensive crypto rulebook (May 2023).

  • Meanwhile, fintech kept compounding: AI underwriting and service automation spread through incumbents and neobanks alike (efficiency up, latency down). (Context from sector surveys synthesized with McKinsey’s State of AI.)

Founder read: In finance, innovation × trust wins. Ship defensibly. Document risk. Court regulators early.

Energy & Transport

  • Clean power crossed 40%. Low-carbon sources supplied ~40.9% of global electricity in 2024, with solar the growth engine.

  • Capital is flowing: $386B invested in renewables in H1-2025 (record; +10% YoY). Mix is shifting toward offshore wind & distributed solar even as utility-scale asset finance softens.

  • EVs are mainstream: >17M electric cars sold in 2024; >20% of global new-car sales. China approaches “half of all cars” sold as electric.

Founder read: Physical transitions look slow—until they flip. Build for the post-inflection world.

Work & Learning

  • Hybrid is sticky (and effective). A large-scale randomized trial shows no productivity loss and ~33% lower attrition with two WFH days/week; Nature publication + Stanford brief confirm.

  • Preference persists: A majority of remote-capable workers prefer hybrid; most expect ongoing flexibility.

Founder read: Tools that blend scale (digital) with signal (human) will keep winning.

The Builders’ Cycle | Boom, chill, focus, rotate

2021 peak: A record 540 companies became unicorns; 113 ecosystems produced at least one.

2022 reset: Global VC fell 35% to $445B (still #2 all-time).

2024 rotation: AI took ~$19B (28%) of Q3 VC; by 2024 overall, AI topped $100B.

2025 breadth: 1,200+ unicorns globally remain—broader, tougher cohort.

Takeaway: Velocity without resilience breaks. The durable playbooks: cash discipline, ruthless focus, ecosystem leverage.

What we learned building through it | Modern Ancients’ Focus

  1. Access beats abundance. Unused funds and idle capacity are design failures. Our work turns opacity into routes.

  2. Time is the new dividend. Treat AI as a time-release mechanism; reinvest saved hours in depth work, customers, and care.

  3. Narrative ≠ noise. Media friction is signal about where to build guardrails and bridges (policy, trust, onboarding).

  4. Inflections reward readiness. If your ops assume the flip (EV, clean power, AI-native workflows), the curve becomes a tailwind.

Field Guide

Founders

  • Build pro-regulation as a feature.

  • Ship co-pilots that move users from task to outcome.

  • Measure and market the time you give back.

Investors

  • Underwrite adoption friction (training, compliance, LLM ops) as value creation, not cost.

  • Back “boring AI” with clear unit economics over splashy frontier bets.

Public Sector / Ecosystem

  • Treat grant/loan access like a product; reduce steps, add prompts, pre-qualify.

  • Co-fund reskilling aligned with sectors already crossing inflection points (EV supply chains, grid software, AI in services).

Onward | The bridge we’re building

From 2019’s calm to 2025’s churn, one pattern holds: systems change faster than stories. Your advantage is crafting the story people can use—and then turning it into infrastructure.

We’ll keep doing both.


Sources

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