PERSON
Aswath Damodaran
NYU Stern professor of finance (b. 1957) — the 'Dean of Valuation' — whose narrative-to-numbers framework and analyses of the SaaSpocalypse apply Kindleberger's insights to contemporary technology valuation.
Aswath Damodaran has spent four decades at NYU Stern developing the most influential contemporary framework for valuing companies under conditions of uncertainty. His methodological commitment — that every valuation is a story about the future translated into financial parameters, and that the discipline lies in making the translation explicit, testable, and revisable — extends Kindleberger's historical insights into the analytical practice of investment. His blog and books, including Narrative and Numbers and The Little Book of Valuation, have shaped how a generation of analysts, investors, and entrepreneurs think about pricing companies during periods of rapid change.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Damodaran's engagement with the AI cycle began before most mainstream valuation analysts recognized its distinctive features. His 'big market delusion' framework, developed in 2020, anticipated the share-arithmetic problem that the AI market would exhibit. His 2024 'Beat Your Bot' essay, written after his colleague Vasant Dhar built DBOT — an AI trained on Damodaran's entire output — articulated