Today, the website question of the late 1990s has a familiar echo, as artificial intelligence moves from experiment to everyday tool in wealth management.
I cannot remember the day I stopped using AltaVista.
There was no moment. One year it was how everyone searched, and then, quietly, it wasn’t. AltaVista filed for an IPO in December 1999. It was withdrawn for good in January 2001, and the company never listed.
The Website Question in the Boardroom
But I remember a smaller argument more clearly than the crash. Whether a company actually needed a website.
Intelligent people debated it seriously in boardrooms. Clients came by referral. Business was done face to face. A website looked like something for retailers, not for a relationship-based firm.
Nobody in those rooms was wrong about the technology. They were wrong about whether it applied to them.
The Same Question, Now About Artificial Intelligence
That is the question in front of us again. Not whether artificial intelligence is real — that debate is settled. For an independent wealth manager, it is narrower and far less comfortable: what does it change about how we actually work, and what does it leave untouched?
The honest answer is that I am still working it out. Three things guide how:
- The thesis is not the vehicle. Agreeing with a technology is not agreeing with a position — in a portfolio or in a business plan.
- Start with the task, not the tool. Every useful decision we have made began with a piece of work we disliked doing, never with a product demonstration.
- Decide what you would not change under any circumstances. Our list is short, and it’s all about judgement and being present when markets turn ugly.
Why the Website Question Still Matters
Companies that waited on a website didn’t fail because of it.
They spent the following years catching up on a conversation that had already moved on without them.
Am I the only one with a sense of déjà vu?
Source: https://vapa.ch/website-question-ai-wealth-management/ · vapa.ch
