I'm good at looking at the right horse early. I suck at picking the right horse early, otherwise I'd be far wealthier than I actually am. I tend to move far too slowly, even once I think I know where the right place to be is, and get in just as it's becoming popular (and get out just before it crashes - I was telling my sister, before I took my latest job, that I've been a part of almost every major bubble of the 21st century. Was at an all-teenage dot-com in 2000, a financial software startup in 2005-2007, and a web 2.0 startup in 2007-2008. I hope that's not reflective of Google's future prospects...) Makes for a comfortable living, but for real wealth you need to take a few more risks than I tend to...
Some things that I've been looking at that seem quite interesting to me now, though:
- LikeALittle.com
- Android. I think that long-term, it has more potential than iOS. The mobile phone space in general has the potential to be huge.
- OCR, computer vision, and other applications of machine learning to imaging problems.
- YCombinator. I think PG's generally right about their being a trend toward startups in the future, and startups that serve startups will become quite big.
I also have the stinking suspicion that the next world-changing tech revolution is in the garage now, and not one of the startups founded from 2004-2010. I, of course, do not know what it is. But there've been a bunch of enabling technologies recently developed - mobile phones and cloud-computing come to mind. And there's also a bigger concentration of brainpower in a smaller volume than we've seen before, with the rise of Google/Facebook/Twitter/Palantir and supporting universities and startups in Silicon Valley. I'm somewhat wondering what will happen when Google ceases to be a nice place to work, because for the last 10 years, they've been recruiting the best minds from all over the planet, putting them 5-to-a-cube in a handful of buildings, and working really hard together. Much of what they learn is probably applicable to a wide range of problems, but because the company is so focused on search, I doubt we've seen all the developments that could come out of that.
Comments
Since you seem to be good at picking the right horse early, what are your favorite new sites/companies right now?
I'm good at looking at the right horse early. I suck at picking the right horse early, otherwise I'd be far wealthier than I actually am. I tend to move far too slowly, even once I think I know where the right place to be is, and get in just as it's becoming popular (and get out just before it crashes - I was telling my sister, before I took my latest job, that I've been a part of almost every major bubble of the 21st century. Was at an all-teenage dot-com in 2000, a financial software startup in 2005-2007, and a web 2.0 startup in 2007-2008. I hope that's not reflective of Google's future prospects...) Makes for a comfortable living, but for real wealth you need to take a few more risks than I tend to...
Some things that I've been looking at that seem quite interesting to me now, though:
- LikeALittle.com
- Android. I think that long-term, it has more potential than iOS. The mobile phone space in general has the potential to be huge.
- OCR, computer vision, and other applications of machine learning to imaging problems.
- Functional programming languages, particularly Haskell
- YCombinator. I think PG's generally right about their being a trend toward startups in the future, and startups that serve startups will become quite big.
I also have the stinking suspicion that the next world-changing tech revolution is in the garage now, and not one of the startups founded from 2004-2010. I, of course, do not know what it is. But there've been a bunch of enabling technologies recently developed - mobile phones and cloud-computing come to mind. And there's also a bigger concentration of brainpower in a smaller volume than we've seen before, with the rise of Google/Facebook/Twitter/Palantir and supporting universities and startups in Silicon Valley. I'm somewhat wondering what will happen when Google ceases to be a nice place to work, because for the last 10 years, they've been recruiting the best minds from all over the planet, putting them 5-to-a-cube in a handful of buildings, and working really hard together. Much of what they learn is probably applicable to a wide range of problems, but because the company is so focused on search, I doubt we've seen all the developments that could come out of that.