Are we in a bubble? Yes we are, planet Earth depends on the atmosphere which is a bubble of gases and protects us from meteorites and warms the Earth’s surface.
Okay, I’m assuming if you are in the technology sector you might be hearing that bubble question every other day. I like everyone else have no idea if we are in a technology bubble and if and when it will pop. When the dot com bubble popped what was left was a lot of broken dreams. In addition, a lot of infrastructure (aka internet plumbing) in the form of underutilized fiber cables, carrier class data switches, etc…
What is a more interesting question is what is being built with all this venture capital (VC) money that is being thrown around these days. If the music stopped today what would we be left with?
1. Two formidable mobile phone platforms – Android and iOS. Android has the market share while iOS has the revenue share. When you look at the first phones from each platform, the delta of awesomeness between an Android phone and an iOS phone was very high in favor of iOS. But, as the years progressed Android really closed the gap and I would say the delta between the two platforms is fairly slim now when you look at mobile phone players like Xiaomi, OnePlus and Yu Televentures from India.
2. Sharing economy. The ability to unlock the value from fixed assets or even people has been inspiring to see. People that are short on cash and have a spare bedroom, can rent that room on Airbnb and generate some revenue (granted this has been happening for years but it was very informal). If you are a hair stylist that only works 3 days a week in a salon, you could potentially “freelance” your skills for a couple days of the week to augment your income.
3. Apps. What can I say, if I hear one more person say “Have, I have this great app idea…” I’m going to puke. All jokes aside, apps have changed the way we interact with technology. Watching a little child use a phone or tablet and move around the interface with ease is something else…that’s what technology is all about. Sitting at a desktop and using a mouse to move something on screen now just seems old school and painful.
In India, the one area that has really benefitted from the flow of VC money has been logistics. Before, logistics was a pain in the ass and getting things from point A to point B was a challenge. But with the rise of new logistics players who can track packages, send an SMS status or allow you to call the delivery agent is great. So if the party stops today, India will also have a much better logistics infrastructure in place.
As Mark Twain says:
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme
A great blog post by venture capitalist Brad Feld talking about the above quote.
celestri - virtual home of manish jain 