2024 New Year's Eve Letter

Dear family and friends,

I’m writing this letter from Cochin, Kerala in India, where I’m about to depart on the long journey back to Austin.  Cochin, or more commonly called Kochi today, is an appropriate place for me to close out the year as a Jew.  It’s home to the oldest synagogue in India, founded in 1568, and is a symbol for the deep ties between the Jewish community and Indian community for thousands of years.  India is now the largest country in the world with 1.46 billion people, surpassing China in 2023 as the most populous country on Earth.  And Indian Americans form the most financially successful minority group in the US, with many giants such as Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) at the helm of some of the most important companies in tech that will set the pace for humanity’s ultimate invention of AI.  

What drew us to India?  Our first Indian wedding - in Mumbai.  It was a three-day event and did not disappoint!  There were over 1,000 people in attendance to see Sanjana and Ishaan wed and the preparations were absolutely extensive and beautiful.  Rachel and I will never forget it (Debra and Levi stayed home for an easier, no travel stress, end to 2024.)

Wow, what a year 2024 has been!  From the re-election of Trump to the breathtaking pace of AI to the historic military achievements of Israel over terrorists throughout the Middle East.  It’s been dizzying, to say the least.  To be clear, we didn’t campaign for Trump and thought Harris would be a competent choice but I get it at the same time.  From our economic and border challenges to Biden’s cognitive decline and the last-minute candidate switch, the people have now spoken.  Republicans will control the Senate, Congress, the White House, and even the Supreme Court (which hopefully will do their best to not politicize that last bastion of independence).  Debra and I remain committed to our independent political views, finding policies to like in both parties and looking for common ground.  And we’ve doubled-down on No Labels going into 2025, which will continue to work for that path with the Problem Solvers Caucus and more.  No Labels’ CEO, Nancy Jacobson, is a true force of nature and has become a friend over the years.

On the family front, our big highlight of the year was our summer trip to Japan.  Levi is now a freshman at Westlake High School and it was his pick this time.  Japan is a favorite country for him - clean, high-tech, culinary, and cultured.  It was a beautiful trip together in Tokyo, Hakone, Nikko, and Kyoto.  Levi used his AI skills to make a penpal there and they communicate back and forth using ChatGPT to translate.  He wowed people in the country with Sora, creating AI-generated J-pop songs on the fly, and interviewing them on their thoughts on AI.  There were many highlights, including Levi wanting to just walk with me and “get lost” in Tokyo, a massive city of over 37 million people without a hint of trash in sight and almost no homeless people (less than 700).  We really loved that half-day walk together, while Debra and Rachel enjoyed high tea and some first-class shopping.

Rachel has continued her love for writing, psychology, and business and is now a sophomore at Tulane.  She’s been writing more for their newspaper, The Tulane Hullabaloo, and my favorite article of hers this year was about Natalie Zarad, a senior at Tulane and founder of Zarad Vintage.  We got to meet Natalie during Family Weekend a few months ago and she’s incredibly impressive.  It was one entrepreneur in Rachel, of Radiant Jewels, interviewing another in Natalie.  Rachel continues her podcasting with Radiant Resilience and has been doing more solo episodes.  She is now the incoming VP of Panhellenic Relations for her sorority and will be busier than ever as a result.  Rush starts on January 3rd for the freshman class and she’s on point to help!  It is great to see her thrive - she truly loves Tulane and makes such good grades too, all while balancing so many outside activities.

Levi is thriving at Westlake as a freshman and very involved in computer science and robotics, not surprisingly (he’s been programming since age four.)  He’s in very advanced classes (he was in the Gifted & Talented Program throughout middle school) and is making great grades.  The big highlight of his development was the AI Boot Camp he asked me to put him through this summer (this was a self-made exercise and he wanted it to be as “hardcore” as possible.)  He worked on over a dozen challenging projects, including helping me with the seventh iteration of my book, where he trained an AI on my voice and it will now be able to read it in any language.  I launched this seventh iteration of The Entrepreneur’s Essentials on Dec. 30th after I worked on an AI project of my own with it, to train two AI-generated podcast hosts to discuss the chapters in a very accessible way.  You can see the results of this on my Medium article and it’s all for free to help as many entrepreneurs as possible.  Tune in!

Debra has had many fabulous, challenging, and memorable trips this year with friends and family. She embarked on a new journey learning Spanish and has been busy with classes, tutors, reading books, and traveling to Spanish speaking countries for learning. We went to Mexico City together where I was able to see her new language skill in action, and it was truly impressive to me! Debra continued her love of hiking with trips to Patagonia y islas de Mallorca y Menorca y los montañas de pirineos. And together we hiked in North Portugal and up through Galicia, España. Debra and her sister also went on their annual birthday vacation in Maui with lots of hiking and snorkeling. She also loved surprising Rachel who really wanted to see her favorite artist again, Taylor Swift, in concert in NOLA near the end of her Eras Tour. We also saw Taylor Swift in 2023 in Houston at the beginning of her Tour. Yes, we are Swifties! Debra also remains very committed to tennis and plays often with her friends in a few leagues.

We also continue to get regular texts from friends enjoying the Hurt Family Tennis Center at the Dell JCC. Membership continues to rapidly grow, benefiting the non-profit. And we are very glad that the community followed by launching the Sue & Jerry Kline Tennis and Outdoor Pro Shop at the JCC, thanks to David Kline’s generosity.

As for me, it has been a very busy year at data.world.  I honestly haven’t been as busy since 2012, the year that my team and I took Bazaarvoice public!  It was all-in-or-nothing for us at data.world with AI and we really advanced our technology and vision on that front.  We have 82 patents now and are becoming  “enterprise data brain” for our customers, unifying their disparate data silos into our knowledge graph to help them “think” and analyze their organization with AI superpowers.  I’ve written about this so much this year, as anyone that follows me on LinkedIn will know.  Here are some of my favorite articles and podcasts if you’ve missed them:

Whew, and there is so much more.  I also continued my writing on Israel with two foundational pieces:

As I close out this letter, where my personal theme entering 2024 was “adaptability and resilience”, I want to share that my personal theme entering 2025 is “the inner journey”.  It is clear to me that a broader awakening of humanity is going on and we are rediscovering ancient wisdom that we once knew so well.  What we need most is a blending of both science and spirituality as we advance towards AGI and really consider, “What is it that most makes us human?”  I closed out my 2024 really pondering this and the universe opened up to me.  Last year, I suggested you read more positive news to balance your media diet, like The Progress Network and FutureCrunch.  This year, I offer to you to watch a documentary, read two books, and listen to a podcast to open up your spiritual heart and mind:

The more we delve into the mysteries of the universe, the more we find that everything is connected.  I don’t find that scary at all - I find it incredibly exciting.  Even if you are an atheist, just open your mind to the science of interconnectedness - these four recommendations will help you do just that.  What stood out to me the most at TED2024 was Demis Hassabis’ ultimate quest to find “the nature of the universe at Planck-scale resolution” and Hartmut Neven’s quantum computing is “happening in another dimension” (from his TED talk) and now at a computing speed that would not be matched by the age of the universe with our current supercomputer technology (read about the recent launch of Google’s Willow quantum chip).  In so many ways if you really look, AI and quantum computing are opening us up to an age of spiritual reawakening as we delve deeper into the deep frontiers of science.  AI is the greatest invention we’ve ever collectively made as humanity (prioritized with more collective investment dollars than any technology before it).  AI builds on all technologies that came before it, and our intentionality in steering that ship to enhance our humanity is going to be key throughout this decade so that we can all cross into that ultimate age of abundance and enlightenment.

With much love for all of you in 2025,

Brett

P.S., Instead of sending holiday cards this year and following our annual tradition of writing this New Year’s Eve letter, we donated in your honor to No Labels and ADL, which continues to fight hate on all fronts from antisemitism to anti-Muslim hate.