I remember the day we killed Microsoft Office on the Mac. Well, we didn't kill it — we just made something so much better that Office became irrelevant for most people. iWork. Pages. Keynote. Clean. Fast. No cruft. But then we got lazy. The world settled for bloatware because nobody had the guts to rebuild. Now some Indian tech tycoon throws $30M of his own money at an "AI alternative" to Microsoft Office. $30M. That's what we spent on the first iPhone's packaging. That's pocket change. Let me be clear: I love the ambition. I hate the approach. Here's the problem. Microsoft Office isn't software. It's a 40-year-old pile of features held together by corporate inertia. Word has 2,000+ commands. Excel has 500 functions nobody uses. PowerPoint? Please. It's a crutch for people who can't tell a story. An AI alternative that simply adds "AI" on top of this mess is like putting a jet engine on a horse-drawn carriage. It's still a carriage. --- The Comparison --- The Real Problem $30M sounds big. It's not. Microsoft spends $30M on Office marketing in a week. They have 1.4 billion users. You don't tilt an industry by outspending — you tilt by changing the rules. The only way to beat Microsoft Office is to make it irrelevant. How? Make a tool that doesn't feel like a tool. A tool that anticipates what you need before you ask. A tool that works on every device, syncs instantly, and has zero learning curve. iPod wasn't a better MP3 player. It was "1,000 songs in your pocket." Office alternative shouldn't be "Office with AI." It should be "I just think, and it appears." This tycoon — I don't know his name, don't care — is thinking inside the box. He's funding a better box. I'd burn the box. --- My Recommendation If I were him, I'd take that $30M and hire exactly 10 people. Three designers. Three engineers. Two AI researchers. One writer. And the CEO (himself) would be the product's first user. Day one: delete every feature from Microsoft Word that isn't typing, formatting, and sharing. That's 98% of it gone. Then rebuild those 2% with AI that actually works. Don't compete on features. Compete on simplicity. Make it so easy a child can write a novel with it. And stop asking users what they want. They'll tell you they want a better ribbon. They're wrong. They want to never think about their office tool again. $30M is enough for a prototype. Not a revolution. But if he's smart, if he has the guts to say no to 99% of features, maybe — just maybe — he'll ship something that makes my old Mac team proud. I hope he does. Because Office sucks. And it's been sucking for 25 years. Someone needs to kill it.