A VC - Latest Comments in My Google Talk On Disruption

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

billcarey2 — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:41:10 -0000

Eager to see your thoughts on energy, and curious about your six words, and how "personalization" and "hyper-local" things local news needs to be addressing, fit in with your vision away from media/entertainment. Thank you.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Mark Essel — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:26:58 -0000

I'm confident he can given his track record. Feel free to contact me
with via email (first initial last name at google mail) or you can
direct message me in friendfeed.
Thanks again for being super generous with your time/network info
either way

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

William Mougayar — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:48:46 -0000

Bingo...that's where I was headed. Many will be marginalized by all this change.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Mark Essel — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:11:26 -0000

double posted (the reply to diqus finally got through)

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:53 -0000

Good point

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:51 -0000

Maybe its the end of the firm as we know it and I feel fine

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:50 -0000

Great stuff I could have and would have used this data. I will in any new versions I give

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:46 -0000

Yeah but if its power to the people, the doctor is in good shape compared to most middle men

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:42 -0000

I talked quite a bit about this yesterday. I hope the video comes out on youtube soon because the live delivery is a way more complete treatment of this topic

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:39 -0000

This is darwinsm. Its been going on for as long as life has existed

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:35 -0000

Can he manage a large call center?

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:21 -0000

Yup

I've got some thoughts on that and as you might imagine I don't think a talk at google is the right place to disclose them

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:25:19 -0000

I agree but I am not sure that its going to be as easy to disrupt because of the logistics of food

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Tom Koltai — Wed, 13 May 2009 20:24:49 -0000

I think the steer to table via abattoir had more to do with preventing cattle rustling than hygienic control. Hygiene was the excuse, cattle rustling was the target.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Tom Koltai — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:58:28 -0000

I'm genuinely suprised that Voip and P2P didnt rate a mention - except in the arena of p2p finance and virtual money.
After all isnt the entire meme of social interraction based on Peer to Peer and sharing of knowledge, best restaurants - best deals, best music, best movies. Isnt that why the masses are leaving the print and appointment media? The best is on the net, instant immediate gratiffication, why look at yesterdays news.
Emerging countries or nations where the communication provider enjoys a monopoly are forcing the option of p2p on low bandwidth users. A nice fast 1024 MBps connection is capable of streaming youtube or a movie from iTunes. But what about the majority of the worlds population who are on 512/256 KB or slower connections - purely because scarcity increases value.
The user pushback is the use of technologies to equalize the deficiency; P2P.
P2P is a technology not a crime. IFS (Illegal file sharing is a crime.)
P2P is a meme
P2P is survival
P2P is the Internet equivalent of the public market square. A good way to pick up on the gossip;
and P2P Voip not transiting the telecommunications carriers may be the biggest disrupter yet.
In 1997, a few colleagues and I built an ATM network atop TCP-IP. We then altered the tcp-ip to run over 802.11(a).
A mesh on a mesh on a mesh.
Adding the power of P2P (here use a little of my processor, here my directory entries can see the person you are looking for........) will make P2P VOIP on Cell the media divorce device of the millenium.
I stopped buying newspapers five years ago.
I stopped buying Music four years ago.
I stopped buying Movies three years ago.
I stopped paying for international phone calls two years ago.
And this year, I stopped paying for minutes on my mobile to mobile phone calls.

I look forward to finding out what I dont have to pay for next year.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Jens — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:06:56 -0000

Good question!

I think it can certainly make things more efficient. I see these things to be operated by NFP, or by governmental organizations themselves.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

John Sharp — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:44:24 -0000

I agree, Fred. But I was thinking more about seniors as excellent potential inhabitants of online worlds, such as SecondLife.

On a recent blog, Bill Gurley shared stats that show SecondLife is in the number one spot re user minutes - and the #2 spot in terms of PC gaming titles.

Seniors have a lot of two very important things: time and money. Put that into the context of an online world geared for their demographic and things could get interesting. Talk about disruption!

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

William Mougayar — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:13:04 -0000

What strikes me as missing from this ppt is the impact on the enterprise and the enterprise worker. It may be that's intentional due the focus on consumer tech, but it seems to me that corporations are getting the short end of the stick here, as they are secondary recipients (due to their lack of abilities to absorb/implement quick change) of all this change. They are currently being marginalized by social media/networking trends and those trends that are mentioned in the ppt could swoop them again.
It's just an observation, but begs the question- what is the (large) enterprise of the future really going to look like/be impacted?
It could be a way to end the talk just to incent thinking in that direction as well.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

disqus_2cZZY1Rtg0 — Wed, 13 May 2009 10:03:13 -0000

I realize this may be a bit late but I noticed that your presentation was a bit light in the health care section. If you are interested in some concrete examples of using information technology in the area of prevention I can send you some materials under separate cover for some of the work my company did with the government of South Africa.

A quick summary: "last year with the government of Gauteng, the most populated state of South Africa, where we installed a cadre of methods to help manage diabetes care: web information, social media, clinics and cell phone reminders. By simply reminding people about their appointments we increased patient’s compliance from 31% to 73% in our pilot group." (http://sviokla.com/context/...

This increased compliance is a big deal because management of chronic diseases is quite expensive, especially as complications which could have been prevented by routine care arise.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

Chris Dodge — Tue, 12 May 2009 23:47:26 -0000

I'm not sure I can make a convincing counter-argument here, but - to my mind - that human element in the "not end-to-end digital" is an indication of massive inefficiencies that are (or will be soon) ripe for the picking.

If you think of any industry or process that is ready for disruption, it is along that Josh Kopelman mantra whereby markets are shrunk exactly because they had been artificially inflated for too long. It is precisely that automation step - removing the inefficient manual steps - which unlocks tremendous value.

Simple case: Think Craigslist. Classifieds was a horridly inefficient manualy process where a "database" (printed listings in a newspaper) was manually sold/edited.

To me, this is the same as healthcare. There are several components of Healthcare/Wellness spectrum that are really just about conveyance of information, assesment of status and wellness, establishment of a plan of action, and evaluation of adherence to the prescribed plan. Much of this does not have to involve high-margin costs of direct physician care. Hence, my interest in several trends towards Physician Assistants as well as these retail-clinics at Walmart. That is "market-shrinking" activity in my eyes.

Ultimately, one component of Healthcare is purely physical and therefore must be a manual, relationship based (i.e. Doctor/patient) interaction. However, there are too many inefficiencies in the mix that will ultimately (hopefully) innovated out of existence.

With regards to the "path", I don't exactly know either at this point in time. But - along with the Education market - I sense big opportunity, but it will have to be hard fought.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

hardaway — Tue, 12 May 2009 22:09:59 -0000

The path is not clear to anyone because of 1) current reform efforts 2) slow adoption curve 3)lack of an easily adopted solution (how does any medical practice get their paper records into digital formats and make them searchable), 4)cost, 5)data that doesn't interoperate 6)HIPAA. But I love being involved in it because for the past twenty years it has felt on the verge.

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

kidmercury — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:39:04 -0000

spoken like a true blog star, boss!

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:34:28 -0000

Very true. But if you can start to compete with 'the system' and begin taking away the best and brightest, then you may be able to force the system to adapt and change

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:33:22 -0000

I'll have to read these books. But not before my talk tomorrow!

Re: My Google Talk On Disruption

fredwilson — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:24:40 -0000

In my job I get to be a helper to dozens of geniuses

On this blog I get to be a helper to thousands of them