The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Google And Hardware
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| Image via CrunchBase |
Social came after search and it can be argued Facebook got that one. But mobile came after social and Google’s Android rules the roost. Big Data is widely perceived as one of the next big things and Google seems well positioned for that phase as well. Robotics is all the rage and Google is making acquisitions left and right.
We have all heard of driverless cars and Google Glass. The Glass is already here, the car is only a few years away. One thing you notice real quick is the dominant software company in the world – used to be Microsoft in the Windows era – is fast becoming a hardware company.
Only a few years back Google was so adamant about staying away from hardware that when it felt vendors were not doing right by its smartphone concept, it brought forth the Nexus line of phones but under the aegis of outside vendors. Even the acquisition of the phone company Motorola was a compulsion. Google really wanted the patents Motorola had to dig in with Android that was being attacked on all sides, primarily by Apple. I never thought Steve Jobs had a case. You can’t copyright the Personal Computer concept, and you can’t copyright the smartphone concept.
But by now the reluctance is gone and Google is unabashed about being a hardware company. What happened? I think what happened was it is not like Google one day decided to give Dell a run for the money and started building PCs as well. What happened was smartness caught up with hardware. Minus the smartness hardware was pretty much junk to Google. But with the smarts every inch of hardware can feel like software. It is the difference between a tongue and a thumb. The tongue, it can be argued, is smart, it is sensitive.
Just like Big Data is right round the corner, the Internet Of Things is right round the corner. And that Internet Of Things is all about smart hardware. Your smoke alarm is smart, your refrigerator is smart, your garage door is smart, your toaster is smart, your car sure is smart. You end up with a smart home. You know the difference between a dumb phone and a smart phone. Extrapolate that and you get the idea. Your home currently is a dumb home.
It is not a sure thing that Google will dominate the next big things like it has dominated search and mobile. But it sure has a clear shot at it. It is poised to be one of the dominant names in both Big Data and the Internet Of Things. As to if will be the top name, the dominant name, that question is up in the air. It is usually extremely hard for the company that dominated one phase of innovation to also dominate the next one. Microsoft dominated the PC, but it did not go on to dominate the web.
It is amazing to me that Larry Page is no Steve Jobs. Larry Page hardly ever makes news, but Google is in the news on a daily basis. Steve Jobs was a dominant personality made for the media. Page stays in the background. But Page’s footprint will likely end up larger at the end of the day, perhaps substantially larger. I think Apple’s best days are behind it, but Google just might end up becoming the world’s first trillion dollar company. But if it does, it will have to hit that mark before 2020. It not, it will have missed it.
That is an interesting proposition because we are living through a time when the relationship between the state and the individual is being redefined. Companies like Google are all about empowering the individual all over the world. All Google users are global citizens at some level, to some degree.
Steve Jobs of course started out his journey saying you have to do both software and hardware. He was proven wrong as Microsoft took the lead by being a purely software company. And then he was proven right as Apple overtook Microsoft in market value on the strength of its iPhone sales. Perhaps the PC was not the right vehicle for the vision. Only a smartphone accorded that fusion.
Robotics should move from the science fiction space to our living rooms in a few short years. Amazon wants to deliver your orders with drones that will fly from their warehouses to our front yards. Giants like Google and Amazon are already competing in that robotics space.
So, yes, the number one software company in the world, Google, now is working to become also the top hardware company in the world. Where does that put Samsung?
Raising Money For A Tech Startup
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| Image via CrunchBase |
Raising money for a tech startup is a Silicon Valley thing, by now done all over the world. You have a great idea, a basic product, and you go raise money. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com jotted down his idea on a paper napkin. Based on that he raised money.
Google is a great company. But if you had bought Google shares when it went public at $80 per share, your money would have grown only 10 times when those shares hit $800. That is great but not mind boggling amazing.
Probably the best investment of any is coming into the first round of a tech startup that is going to be wildly successful. The first person to put in $100,000 into Google saw that money become a billion and a half in about eight years. The first person to put $500,000 into Facebook saw that money become two billion in six years.
But there are many more mid-level successes that don’t make it to the mainstream press. Numerous tech companies get bought out at valuations ranging from 10 million to a billion dollars. And then there are tech companies that churn out revenues month after month many small businesses don’t manage to.
New York City by now is number two after San Francisco on the tech scene. Used to be Boston, not anymore, although it was great for me to get to meet Rudra Pandey in person this past Friday in his office. Pandey is the richest Nepali in North America. I felt like he was just getting started. Sitting across a table from him feels like sitting next to a bullet train. He is all ready to go. Before Pandey the honor of being the richest Nepali in North America went to Aditya Jha out of Toronto who shares the same home district in Nepal as me: Mahottari. Jha also got his money through the sale of a software firm.
The big companies like Google and Facebook and Apple might all be in the traditional Silicon Valley closer to San Jose, but the center of gravity moved to San Francisco years ago, apparently the pull of the urban lifestyle was too great.
So if you could build a Stanford on Roosevelt Island, as is in the works, there is no way San Francisco could beat New York City on the urban thing. To borrow a phrase from Saddam Hussein who would talk in terms of “the mother of all battles,” NYC is the mother of all things urban. And guess where the biggest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley raise their money from! From the pension funds in New York!
New York City has a decent movie industry and a decent tech scene. But the tech scene is all set to ramp up, although the top venture capitalist in NYC, Fred Wilson, likes to say the city is “decades” behind Silicon Valley in terms of the tech ecosystem thing.
But depends on what it is you are trying to do. If your app is people centric, if your app is big city centric, NYC just might be the place.
Software is going to play a big role in Nepal’s economic transformation, no doubt, and that is why fund-raising in the Nepali community is important. You are trying to contribute to the culture. The thought has to percolate.
Long Island City could be a great place for office space. Several trains stop there. It is right next to Roosevelt Island, where the tech university will be located. It is not in Manhattan, so the rent is cheaper. But it is right next to Manhattan, sure has the Manhattan view. And it is but 10 minutes on the train to Jackson Heights, where all the Desi food is.
Fundraising is about the sense of possibility, of what could happen. A tech startup is of a different magnitude than tech consulting. With tech consulting you are building stuff for other people, for your clients. Often times the project can be small. With a tech startup you are creating wealth.
I remember when FourSquare presented for the first time on stage at the NY Tech MeetUp. I did not “get it.” I thought the check in thing was the weirdest thing. But a few months later I got it, I got it why it was the next Twitter. I got to know the founders of Venmo a few years ago before they had raised any money. Well, they sold the company last year for $26 million. Rumor has it FourSquare’s Indian Co-Founder Naveen walked away with 80 million dollars.
The city’s tech ecosystem sure is building up.
I once met this guy who had sold his company to Google for a billion and a half. When it was my turn to shake his hand, I asked him a question. I said, you got money, why are you still raising money from VCs for your next startup? He said, two reasons. One, VCs giving money is market validation that maybe my idea is a good one. Two, VCs bring way more than money to the table. They bring their knowledge, their contacts.
One hopes the new crowd-funding possibilities will open up the field a bit. But there is no beating the first round, also known as the friends and family round. That is informal. And the founder can bring in anyone. In future rounds, that luxury is no more. Only licensed investors come in.
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