What's your Bet on the Future?
November 2021
My latest existential crisis was triggered by this tweet. I’ve been thinking about this a lot in the last few years, but this forced a lot of clarity in my mind.
There have been people working on crypto for a decade and consumer VR for as long. As those areas mature, these experts will lead the way. Much like how early in my career social media was the same kind of bet that has now grown significantly. What are people just starting now?
/0 - Few understand this.
- All the known entities right now are people who made their mark via the Internet, Social and Mobile.
- The Crypto/VR people will make their mark now. But that’s already a decade old. The intersection between the two sets of folks is fairly low.
/1 The early adopter phase - the Internet is already 25 years old now, Social is 15 years old. Crypto/VR is about 5 years old. The rate of change of new technology waves and inflection points coming in is rapidly reducing. It’s both scary and exciting.
/2 The winners in any market are usually decided during the early adopter phase. Platforms and networks get built then and then scale with the market growing. If you don’t stay on the cutting edge actively, you risk becoming completely irrelevant.
/3 Even the generation 10 years younger than us will think of us as dinosaurs. Just like we meme and make fun of the last generation business leaders who don’t get technology, I’m fairly aware of a lot of current ‘tech’ leaders in internet/mobile, who simply don’t get the next wave.
Food for thought:
Are you coasting on your knowledge of the past, or are you betting on and armed to build the future? Are you just exploiting or are you also exploring? Are you climbing the right hill for the future?