A VC - Latest Comments in There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 06:34:09 -0000

I like demo or die

That's a great way to put it Idit

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Idit Harel Caperton — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:33:01 -0000

Fred,
I agree with your notion as expressed in your slides and talk that it is essential to "get your hands dirty" or "jump into the water" in order to catch the waves of the future, and blog/talk about "what you think is coming" with many people. Did you see the movie Dirty Dancing? So you are talking about "Dirty Learning" (my colleague Seymour Papert's term).

AND it's not just about talking. For me, what's even more necessary is talking while designing and building a DEMO (or Prototype) for your big idea or your vision of what's coming. It's Demo or Die.

Because, often, new inventions or ideas, especially the ones that are far-out revolution type, must be EXPERIENCED by yourself and others, not just imagined and discussed in text. So regular my tip for entrepreneurs is to move fast into creating an "object to think with" and capture their "signals of the future" in a concrete demo (plus text or PPT). You also learn A LOT as you build it; you learn A LOT by explaining and teaching others about your thinking. Idit.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:58:08 -0000

That is my big issue with kindle

They (Amazon) asked me to put this blog on kindle before the first version
launched

When I heard about the $1.99/month fee, I refused on principal

That's nuts

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:55:10 -0000

Some are doing it. I particularly like buy the vinyl record and get the mp3s
for free.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Reid Curley — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:25:08 -0000

At $1.99 per month per blog, it is going to be a long time before I start using my kindle to read blogs. This despite my affinity for both blogs and the kindle

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

hypermark — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:45:42 -0000

A sidebar on that point is that I can not for the life of me figure out why the music and print media haven't glommed on to bundling logic between analog and digital (i.e., buy the physical CD, and for $2 more download the digital version to your iPod; buy the book, and for $2 more download the digital version to your Kindle). Things and bits can co-exist, and there is a segmentation strategy that juices margins accordingly.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:35:46 -0000

Imagine if I was reading this on a kindle and one click and I had the book. Blogs and social media can drive book sales when its end to end digital.

But that's for my friday talk at random house

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:33:37 -0000

That's what I had. Thanks so much. I'm gonna add a picture of it to my deck!!

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

val_popov — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:34:20 -0000

Crystal Present – couldn’t agree more. Great ideas are born when you look at the present and identify a problem or ask a question that no one else has asked. That’s the hardest part - having a crystal clear vision of a problem that no one else has seen or put it in terms that boil it down to its essence. Once you know what questions to ask, the solutions will come easy and natural. Google is the perfect example: Sergey and Larry saw the core issue with online search – search results were based on what websites said about themselves, which is unreliable and open to abuse. They saw the essence of the problem, and the rest is history.

The good news is that our Present abounds with problems, big problems – which mean big opportunities for those that have a crystal clear vision of the present!

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Ameeda Chowdhury — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:50:11 -0000

Very true. The debate aspect is so crucial especially when working on an untested concept. The problem we had was how to have a constructive debate about a concept (Snazl) while it didn't exist. A risk we took was to build a product and then test it out with a handful of people, but didn't open up a blog until about 2 days ago.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Doug Kersten — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:28:43 -0000

I bought the Rio MP100 (i think). It was the very first MP3 player on the market. I still have it, the box, software, etc. I remember taking it home and showing it to my god-son (a teenager at the time listening to CDs) and telling him it was the future of music. He still remembers that to this day. Every once and a while I use it, just to remember what it felt like to hold something so revolutionary for the first time and to remind myself how cool and exciting technology is. This attitude about always seeing what is out there, trying new things, and experimenting with new concepts is also why I sometimes find myself unable to relate with peers my own age, because I have kept up and they have not. I don't feel sorry for myself though, I feel sad for them. They are already living in the past and haven't realized it yet.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Keenan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:22:28 -0000

This goes well with your Yawn Post. Having the fortitude and strength to make the bets against all odds is a critical component, not addressed enough. Conventional wisdom can act as one heck of a barrier to entry.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

hypermark — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:11:14 -0000

Another way of looking at this one is scenario planning, which basically says, "We can't be sure what exactly plays out over the coming months and years, but we can construct 2-3 plausible macro scenarios, and based on same extrapolate what each of those scenarios would mean in terms of strategy, winners and losers." A great book on this is The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

kidmercury — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:37:26 -0000

now that's what i call droppin' truth, boss!!!

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

dteten — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:17:22 -0000

General Atlantic has an article on their website on "Looking at Growth and Growth Opportunities", which I think is very pertinent: http://www.generalatlantic....

I'm now leading a research study on precisely this issue, tentatively titled "Best Practices in Venture Capital and Private Equity Deal Origination." For a preview, you can see the slides from a presentation I deliver at VC and private equity conferences on this topic, at http://www.teten.com/deals . You can also download there a webinar I delivered on this topic.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:57:39 -0000

That sucks so bad

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:57:33 -0000

Getting laughed at is important. It means you are doing something right

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:56:22 -0000

I really like the last line in your comment. So true

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

peter zaballos — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:36:47 -0000

The crystal ball comments always seem to come from people furthest removed from the process of creating interesting new businesses built on new technologies. It's generally only with hindsight that the general population, or even people "on the inside" recognize what then new "new" innovation has become transformative (for reasons you alluded to in your post about the yawn factor).

No, working in the tech startup landscape is the modern day version of working during the industrial revolution, a lot of hard, sweaty work being done by many. It's the essence of "quantity time" applied in areas where there are large shifts in the economics or efficiency (or both) of a market, and you're pursuing where that is taking you, letting gravity guide a lot of your actions, but at the end of the day, you're not predicting anything. You're rapidly pursuing an vaguely bounded opportunity, to see what you can make of it.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

David Semeria — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:06:47 -0000

In 1987 I was an IT intern for a large UK company. I was asked to write a comparative report on Lotus 123 vs Excel, the very first release of which had landed on my desk a few days previously (20 white diskettes). The 50 page report was very detailed and came out massively in favour of Excel.

My boss pinned it to the wall and the whole department laughed about it for weeks. Apparently I had exhibited levels of naivety which were exceptional even for the most goofy of students. Was I really not aware, they asked, of how much money the company had already invested in Lotus software and training? Had I any idea of how much it would cost to switch? On which fucking planet did I believe I was living?

I replied that Excel would kill 123 and the longer they waited the more the transition would cost. I based my analysis purely on the fact that even my mother could use Excel to create cool WYSWYG spreadsheets, whereas achieving similar results in 123 required a lot more IT skill.

Moral: always trust your gut rather than what the smart money is saying.

Even if it means getting laughed at.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Kjell Nace — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 10:20:26 -0000

Not a comment on crystal balls as it pertains to your coming presentation but rather your prior thoughts on Obama's speech, in particular regarding immigrants and immigration. As reported in the Financial Times earlier this week:

BofA withdraws job offers to foreign MBAs

By Della Bradshaw in London

Published: March 9 2009 00:07 | Last updated: March 9 2009 00:07

Bank of America has become the first US bank to withdraw job offers made to MBA students graduating from US business schools this summer, citing conditions laid out in its bail-out deal as the reason.

The recently passed $787bn stimulus bill in effect prevents financial institutions that have received money from the government’s troubled asset relief programme from applying for H1-B visas for highly skilled immigrants if they have recently made US workers redundant.
EDITOR’S CHOICE
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BofA, which has received a total of $45bn in Tarp funds, is in the process of digesting two large acquisitions – Countrywide, the mortgage broker, and Merrill Lynch – which will see thousands of jobs lost.

A spokesman for the bank said: “Recent changes in legislation made it necessary for Bank of America to rescind job offers it had made to students requiring H-1B sponsorship.”

The number of international students affected by the BofA move is thought to be no more than 50 but business schools are concerned that other banks could follow suit.

Traditionally, about a third of MBA students at the leading US schools have taken up finance and banking jobs on graduation, with about a third of those MBAs coming from outside the US.

Some supporters of freer migration have criticised the Tarp measure for threatening to cut the US off from foreign talent and encouraging tit-for-tat retaliation by other countries.

One concern for business school deans is that students who have traditionally studied in the US may go elsewhere. “There might be an inclination for people from around the world to vote with their feet,” says David Schmittlein, dean of MIT’s Sloan school of management in Boston.

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:58:26 -0000

To paraphrase a snarky t-shirt I'm familiar with:

"I like the stuff you'll like in five years"

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:58:22 -0000

By using the stuff. I report my whereabouts to the web in real time. And I am constantly looking for ways to make that live feed useful to me

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

fredwilson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:57:18 -0000

Exactly.

The day I got my first mp3 player (I forget the brand) back in 1998 I stood up in front of a room of about 100 ppl I was presenting something else to and I just couldn't bring myself to talk about what I was supposed to talk about

I took the mp3 player out of my pocket and held it up over my head and said 'this is revolutionary technology. It is going to transform the music business'

I couldn't think about anything else for days

Re: There's No Such Thing As A Crystal Ball

Peter Fleckenstein — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 09:27:51 -0000

Thanks Fred, feel free to, and I'm honored.