Video Of The Week: The End Of The Beginning

This is a talk that Benedict Evans gave at the A16Z Summit earlier this month. If it were possible to watch YouTube in 2/3 speed, I would love to do that with this video. Otherwise, I think it is terrific in it’s ability to capture where we are in “tech” and where we are going. It is about 25mins long.

#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Tom Labus

    Did he have another meeting to go to?

    1. fredwilson

      Exactly. He probably had a fixed amount of time and knew he had too many slides. Mary Meeker does that too with her Internet Report presentation

      1. LE

        I hate people who speak slowly. But speaking to fast (with this type of presentation) is simply not appropriate period.If you have to many slides then you edit and cut the slides. If you speak fast by default then you get help with slowing down your presentation. It’s selling. No way you would accept this if someone was pitching you for business or even if you were hiring a contractor. Mary Meeker is wrong as well. This is so obvious I can’t see any defense of it.

    2. William Mougayar

      Same speed as Balaji, Chris Dixon, Marc Andreessen or Naval 😉

  2. McNulty

    YouTube playback speed of .5 or .75 in the app (vs embedded player).

  3. Lawrence Brass

    Tryitat0.5speedfromthecontextmenuonyoutube,butitsoundlikeanalien.No0.66…speedoptionavailable.Lessyogamorecoffeecanhelp.;)

    1. fredwilson

      thanks

  4. Constantin Campean

    You can change the speed of the video by opening Developer Tools in the targeted page and run: document.querySelector(‘video’).playbackRate = 2/3 or by making a bookmarklet with the following code: javascript:document.querySelector(‘video’).playbackRate=parseFloat(prompt(‘Set%20the%20playback%20rate:’));void%200;

    1. fredwilson

      wowthanks

      1. LE

        Easier than that. If you watch on youtube and click the ‘gear’ you will get options which allow you to easily alter the speed. But it doesn’t sound to good. See screen shots…. https://uploads.disquscdn.c

  5. DJL

    “Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.”Closing Time, Semisonic

  6. Richard

    https://uploads.disquscdn.c… The global warming benefits of electric vehicles may not be the cumulative CO2 savings as electric cars produce about the same amount of CO2. Rather, and hopefully electric vehicles will centralize the emissions away from cities and reduce local smog.

    1. Matt Zagaja

      A lot of coal plants are being replaced by superior natural gas plants, but in places like Connecticut a majority of electricity mix is nuclear. The shift to solar/wind is rendering this criticism moot in a lot of places anyways.

      1. Richard

        Any examples for rendering this moot? Natural gas gets the fleet close to 60 mpg equivalent. Factor price elasticity issues ?

        1. Matt Zagaja

          Coal consumption of electricity is down 3% YoY nationally per the EIA. Just look at the table for Texas https://www.eia.gov/state/s… and see the massive YoY growth of wind power while coal and natural gas are declining.

          1. Richard

            Yawn. We are talking about electrifying 20 million cars a year. Makes sense for Los Angeles. Nebraska ? Not so much.

  7. george

    Really enjoy BE’s insights; I found his thoughts on new layers interesting: moving from decentralized (internet/web) > centralized (Google/FB) – decentralized (ML + Crypto) quite fascinating. All in all, I tend to agree, new tools will continue to provide new capabilities for people to scale and that’s pretty powerful.

    1. Richard

      Why is it that the decentralized web can’t even crack the early adopter to every technology over the last 150 years? Pornography.

  8. Matt Zagaja

    Some issues and deltas that I think are missing:* Some of us are going to need large supplies of motion sickness pills for all the Netflix we’ll be watching in our self-driving Ubers.* One unaddressed issue: infrastructure. The uneven distribution and setup of mobile networks is bonkers to me. In London I got a local SIM and was lucky to achieve 10Mbps down on my LTE connection and could not connect in the tube. In Boston I hit maybe 15Mbps. Connecticut is 75Mbps down, and Faro, Portugal was 180Mbps down via LTE. Kind of crazy considering the iPhone XS claims it can do Gigabit LTE.* Kind of sad that very little of the presentation suggested opportunities in fixing housing, energy, or education.Also it is surprising how often the limiting reagent to innovation is not technology but culture. I finally adopted Instacart during a really cold winter (because I was so stubborn about paying the $150 subscription) but getting those 2-3 hours a weekend back created huge wins for me. People still will refuse to participate in grocery delivery because they view it as inferior to going to the grocery store, but other than the occasional order screw-up it works great.

    1. Richard

      Add a toilet and a shower to that self driving vehicle and Ben might be on to something.

      1. sigmaalgebra

        Naw, no way, can’t compete with a long SUV with fold down back seats and a nice air mattress with sheets, pillows, blankets for my girl and I, and maybe a portable TV!!!!

        1. Richard

          I was thinking about traveling to work not heading home.

  9. Richard

    https://uploads.disquscdn.c…Technology is rarely this trendline predictable as Ben suggests. War will be the big disrupter and it looks like climate change may be the catalyst.It will be something like the control of global aviation that splits Europe from the US.

    1. JLM

      .Europe will never split from the USA until it can defend itself. Fat chance of that as long as the USA funds NATO and stations troops in Europe.WWI, WWII, Marshal Plan, Cold War, War on Terror – USA pulled the freight.The EU is about to shatter. They live in fear of chicken shit little Russia while putting their pencil necks in the noose of Russian natural gas, a strategic error of suicidal proportions.Trump is so right on this.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. Richard

        Astute observation. But is there a chance that upcoming generation chooses climate security by annexing (with or without consent) with china (vs continental security with Hitler). The world doesn’t repeat itself but it does rhyme.

    2. sigmaalgebra

      > it looks like climate change may be the catalyst.Where can I get really good odds taking the other side of that bet?There are lots of fears. E.g., it would be a disaster if the sun quit moving across the sky. Soooo, some extreme preventative measures are justified. Soooo, do what the Mayans did: Kill people to pour their blood on a rock to keep the sun moving across the sky. It worked, didn’t it? Uh, the sun did keep moving across the sky!!!There was a LOT of such stuff also in Europe, and then they developed The Enlightenment and The Age of Reason. So, before responding to fears by expensive means, they insisted on some solid evidence.Well, for climate change humans have caused or could do anything about, there is zip, zilch, zero, nichts, nil, nada solid evidence. So, f’get about it.But Saint Laureate Al Guru looking for fame and fortune, the NYT after a long lasting narrative with hundreds of continuing stories to grab eyeballs and get ad revenue, NBC scaring people to get eyeballs for ad revenue, a lot of poor countries in the UN looking for charity from the rich countries, a lot of people in the US looking for subsidies they are willing to kick back for campaign donations, etc., a lot of Democrat politicians looking for votes and power are pushing this flim-flam, fraud, scam that would shoot the US economy in the gut, do enormous damage to the US as Sultan Hussein bin Obozo “Electric rates would necessarily skyrocket” wanted, tried to do, and came so close to doing.

      1. Richard

        Oh, I wasn’t arguing the science, just the marketing of the science. I haven’t looked at it yet, but somebody better hurry and look closer at the experimentals designs behind the headlines . Even if you can prove that the lights on the horizon are not a train heading your way but only random lights and there is only a 1/10,000 chance that you could be wrong, you are standing on a track surrounded by a few thousand people who can’t undersrand what you are saying. Think standing your ground as the lights get closer is going to get any easier?

        1. sigmaalgebra

          I’m against big sacrifices, e.g., Alexandria’s recent, IIRC “100% renewable energy in 10 years”, having electric rates “necessarily skyrocket” (Sultan Hussein bin Obozo Greenie fan), killing people to pour their blood on a rock, etc.But, yes, somehow the media has so lowered the bar on “truth” that there is a new norm of accepting total nonsense.

  10. jason wright

    Benedict Goodspeak strikes again. If we can’t slow him down how do we speed up? Drugs? A16Z sounds like an experimental drug.

  11. PhilipSugar

    Totally different strokes for different folks. If I was watching live, I’d be saying wait, what?But as I sit here and putter around on a Saturday, I can pause, ponder, and then quickly repeat. I can get 60min of content in 20 min bytes.

    1. LE

      My guess is that Fred’s interest in this is quite different than either of us (or at least me). For me it’s entertainment (and very weak at that). It contains nothing actionable or significant worth the time spent watching or listening. For me. [1] I don’t have to pretend that what Benedict says about this matters. What I question is to what extent what he says matters to even people who have an interest. I can’t find anything in his past that indicates that he is more right about this than anyone else out there. Other than he has been blessed as a partner at A16z. I find observation of people’s interest in what he says of much greater interest.I think info like this also is a bit of ‘the fortune teller’ or ‘the yellow page ad’. If you stuff enough info into a presentation (or a psychic reading) there will be things that people (the 50% correct) that people say ‘oh yeah sure that’s right and makes sense’. But which of the 100 items is that? It can be whatever you want it to be. I picked a random point in the presentation where Evans says ‘high penetration and high capital’. Does that mean that Kickstarter will go out of favor? Of course not. Small example but my point is this is like fortune telling only more refined and more ‘intellectual’. The way the message appears to be refined and important makes it seem more important and correct.I should watch the entire video before giving my opinions. But I won’t because I have seen this pattern before. [2]Lastly always unclear to me why a company (A16Z) gives up their ‘edge’ if it’s really an ‘edge’ other than they don’t see it as valuable and use it for marketing and propaganda purposes. Read that again.[1] I watched a few documentaries on North Korea and the Kims over the past week which was very entertaining but not actionable and didn’t matter either. But it was entertaining.[2] Did anyone at all predict the disruption of the iphone even after the iphone actually launched not to mention 2 years before? Has anyone ever analyzed predictions over time (what I call ‘how often is Cramer actually right’)?

      1. JLM

        .If you say enough stuff, some of it turns out correct. If you ponder it, that is the underlying financial algorithm of VC.Lots of bets, 80% wrong, a few big wins. Adjust the percentages to fit your vanity, but more losers than winners.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. LE

          The bets are fine I am questioning the value of the information in making those bets.I see it as a version of the man who mows his lawn so that his wife thinks he is actually doing some job to earn his keep. Of course the lawn does need to be mowed.My equivalent example is with me ‘jumping to conclusions’. If you jump to enough conclusions if you are generally right over time (more than wrong) you will win. For example what I am saying here (and in many of my comments) is an example of that.

          1. JLM

            .I am agreeing more with you than you do with yourself.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        2. sigmaalgebra

          So, pick some volatile stocks and find names of 4096 wealthy people. Send 2048 of those people predictions the portfolio will go up in one month and to the other 2048, go down. Then take the 2048 people where were correct and tell 1024 of them in the next month the portfolio will go up and the other 1028, go down. Take the winning 1024, split into two batches of 512, etc.Then for the batch of 512 where the prediction was correct,, write them pointing out that your AI/ML/DS unique market insight has resulted in three big (volatile stocks) wins in a row and for more of this fantastic advice (“past successes do not predict future outcomes” boilerplate disclaimer) subscribe for merely $10,000 a month.Yup, just try lots of cases and can find some wins. Do the above and have a heck of a scam. Just what laws that violates I don’t know!

      2. JLM

        .The NK Kim docs are no mistake. This is part of the repatriation of NK/Kim (talking about Saudi Arabia and its murderous Prince MBS).In 10 years, NK will be a vacation destination.Think not? Consider Vietnam, run by a brutal Communist dictatorship post VN War, huge vacay destination.Says the guy who surfed China Beach back in the day. Nice breakJLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. LE

          There is a very good chance that will happen. What the leader is most interested in is what’s in it for him personally and being able to continue his good life. So any deal must be structured to solve that need and convince him (and people he trusts) of that. If possible.The issue is the vast number of parties on the other side (columnists and pundits and politicians) are interested in having it all and all at once. TMI: It’s like me and my first wife. She screwed up by wanting total and complete change and submission. So fuck that. No way. Boy am I glad she did that (because now with my 2nd wife things are so vastly better and no changes needed). And that is what people get wrong with DPRK ‘what about human rights, what about this, what about that, democracy, the people and so on’. Not the way to get a deal done. [1]What’s in it for the other guy? Key concept. Please don’t confuse this with some book which says ‘win win’ that’s not what I am talking about.Wanted to put up a security camera on the balcony of a condo so I could view the beach remotely. The building strictly does not allow that and they are ‘dicks’ (as are many boards they think they are big men) on top of that. They love saying ‘no’. Thinks it makes them big men. (One guy is the head of some horse racing association and an attorney who actually gets physically aggressive I have been told).What did I do? Not say ‘can I do this’ or ‘why can’t I do this’ but “I will make a feed where you can watch any time and see the ocean wouldn’t that be cool’ and “top notch installation by a professional company’. And that is what got it done. Approved! I gave them a reason to go along with something they never had allowed previously.[1] Key concept in medicine. If the patient is choking don’t worry about infection grab a pen if you have to and get an airway. Treat the infection afterwords.

        2. Lawrence Brass

          I don’t believe the solution is a bilateral issue between NK and the US. Today it is a triangle. Asia is not a westerner playground anymore.I recall that scene in Apocalypse Now. 🙂

      3. Lawrence Brass

        The data and trends are interesting but the analyses and discussions over the data is where the real value is and takes some more time, imho. Scott Galloway uses the same technique, speak fast and cause an impact.

        1. LE

          speak fastI like people that speak fast generally.However it’s also a technique (intended or not) to limit people being able to understand what you are saying. Hence the expression ‘he was a fast talker’.The reason it works is generally people don’t want to appear to be stupid by saying that they don’t understand.That is why when they don’t understand they typically preface what they say with some modifier that translates to “forgive me if I am stupid’. (Also to show respect and other reasons I will add). So they assume (wrongly) that it’s them not the speaker or the person imparting the information.This is a version of what Fred discussed in another context. The ‘Morty” story. “It’s standard”. Kind of like ‘ride at your own risk’ for people who think that means they can’t sue. They assume the sign (or the speaker is right).

          1. Lawrence Brass

            I learned that the responsibility of being understood lies on the speaker not the audience. Sure, a fast speaker may be a sign of intelligence but if one can’t keep up and comprehend the complete message, what is the point?At meetings I usually interrupt the speaker if I get lost.

          2. LE

            It’s not so much a sign of intelligence as a trait that people associate with someone who knows what they are saying because it’s hard to talk fast if you don’t have a good grasp of what you are saying.I found in college there was a girl that worked at the computer center in an admin role. Her name was Sarise. She actually ‘sounded smart’ to me. Because when I asked her questions it was about something she answered all day long and that she knew about.But then one day (she was attractive) I started to talk about something else. And all the sudden ‘the stupid’ came out. She didn’t talk fast and she didn’t sound smart. Not at all.

          3. Lawrence Brass

            A dedicated specialist or crafts(wo)man is always a pleasure to hear.It is conviction vs wishful talking or thinking. Conviction is very difficult to fake or misinterpret.I am wondering about the “something else”.. 🙂

      4. PhilipSugar

        I disagree. If I was paying for this, then I might have a different thought. a16z does it to show thought leadership.Does it make me think? Yes.Does it show some trends? Positively.Does it make some people think outside their world?Yes.Three great quotes that I bet people here don’t understand:How small eCommerce is to overall Commerce.There are two ways that people bank…..the way people in this room do and those not in this room do.You are going to have to do the hard stuff the physical stuff in the future.Makes me think and to me that is the biggest part of leadership (not just leading people, leading companies). Seeing the whole picture, so how can this hurt?Frankly if you didn’t care you wouldn’t read or comment on this blog. (other than the entertainment/distraction part of it)

        1. LE

          If it is of value then it’s of value and you pay for it. Otherwise that seems to be a contradiction, no? Free does not make it more worthwhile because the cost wouldn’t move the needle if you paid for it.I read a vast amount of other source material every day including print papers. I do a great deal of reading actually. This is what Benedict thinks and what he has gotten ‘by reading’ and speaking to others. It’s his take. No more than that. We don’t even have his batting history. Could be of value. But I don’t accept that it is ‘just because’. I accept what you say about things you tell me because there is a reason why you should be correct based on what I know about you. I don’t like this general ‘is branded and must be correct’ thinking.But by the same token more info is not better if it colors what you think. Is it?As far as the video it’s something that Fred plucked out. He didn’t even say why he personally thinks what Benedict says is important at all. Just that it pays to watch it. If I make a comment here I will back up what I am saying and give anecdotes or reasons why I think what I think. So do you and others.Lastly if it’s ‘the end of the beginning’ who is that for exactly? Amazon got started way way at the beginning. It’s not ‘the end for them’. It’s not the end for Apple. It’s not the end for Netflix.

          1. sigmaalgebra

            Okay, consider the A16Z “end of the beginning” for information technology but not for Churchill’s remark. Gee, I guessed right: That remark was after the Allied victory in North Africa, upon checking, in particular, the Second Battle of El Alamein.Then let’s compare with other advances in technology, working in volcanic glass, flint, fire, wood, stone, bronze, iron, paper, textiles, the wheel, domesticated animals, agriculture, arithmetic, plane geometry, astronomy and calendar making, open ocean sailing, printing, guns, ocean navigation, optics, steel, chemistry, steam, coal, biochemistry, anesthetics, electricity, radio, electronics, electric motors, photography, audio recording, motion pictures, internal combustion engines, airplanes, antibiotics, atomic energy, the transistor, digital computing, micro-electronics, digital magnetic recording, …So, for many of these, I would claim: For the time when one might have claimed “the end of the beginning” we now see that there was so much more to come that a more appropriate characterization would have been just “the beginning” without “the end of”. That is, commonly people WERE impressed with the progress so far, “the beginning”, but didn’t see at all clearly the future, under estimated that future, over estimated what fraction, “the end”, of the total had occurred so far, and, thus, declared “the end of …”.E.g., maybe the artificial intelligence (AI) people would declare that their amazing progress to date signals “the end of the beginning”. Well, I’d say that they are at best only at the very beginning and we should emphasize artificial. For some evidence about intelligence, seehttps://www.youtube.com/wat…Yes, some of those little guys may have been trained, signaled, etc. but not for all of the behavior of all them! Instead, in there are a lot of smart little guys with brains that might weigh no more than 1-2 nickels, e.g., the bird snow boarding down a snowy roof top, the monkey opening and drinking a bottle of grape juice, the guinea pig opening the metal cookie collection, the bird putting out bait to catch a fish. And with a larger brain, the whale teasing the children. Uh, Dad had us go fishing; he liked that; but that bird caught a fish in MUCH less time than we ever did!Come ON AI guys, be as smart as one of those birds and conclude that you are only at the very beginning and, really, on a path that won’t lead even to the dumbest of these animals. Also start to suspect that there is a LOT in common, birds to mammals, and, thus, likely in their most recent common ancestor which is going WAY back, in how their intelligence works so should seek to understand that.For a little more:(1) The video hasNew Structural LayersAfter search and social, ML and crypto.Uh, IMHO “structural layers” is inappropriate and just pretentious.I’ll start with some examples and see a pattern:(1) Search is not nearly done and neither is social.ML has a lot that is new and good, but nearly all the good is not new and the new not much better.IMHO, in the term “machine learning”, there is a deliberately misleading, pretentious, hype-scam, fraud — the machines don’t “learn”, not yet, not nearly. Such a fraud is a very poor start for progress in anything. E.g., the current techniques of machine learning have no hope of figuring out how to add 1/2 + 1/3 by finding the least common denominator, i.e., via the Euclidean least common multiple, greatest common divisor algorithm. No way will current ML, still heavily empirical curve fitting, e.g., 100 year old regression analysis, figure out the Chinese remainder theorem to solve common puzzles, generalize from the area of a circle to the volume of a sphere, discover, prove, and apply the Pythagorean theorem, figure out that no way can it find positive integers p and q so that (p/q)^2 = 2 (try a search, guys; there are plenty of integers to try; or figure out the fundamental theorem of arithmetic that each integer has a unique factorization as a product of primes and (p/q)^2 = 2 would mean that pp = 2qq so that the left side has an even number of factors of 2 while the right side has an odd number in contradiction to the fundamental theorem of arithmetic), figure out Newton iteration for finding square root, etc. Or, given a text in plane geometry, read and learn the material well enough to work the exercises. ML figuring out my original math in my startup, let me recover from choking from ROFL!! ML — just in the name, already a fraud.Did I mention that such a fraud is a very poor start for progress in anything?Crypto? That whole field so far has no serious support and remains something blue sky or at the end of some rainbow. About the best we can say is that so far we have no solid proof that it will flop soon. But certainly we should not claim that crypto has a good chance of being something significant in “new structural layers”.(2) Later the talk predicts the end of gas stations in, IIRC, 10 years.IMHO, absurd. Where can I get good odds to take the other side of that bet? That’s more “California dreaming” from the Greenies who just, two years in a row, from taking forest management advice from fellow Greenies out so worship Thumper and Bambi, caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and scores of lost lives two years in a row, including the deaths of lots of friends of both Thumper and Bambi.Instead, again, once again, over again, yet again, one more time, cars are IMPORTANT and will remain so as far as the eye can see, and for a car a 20 gallon tank of gasoline is super tough to beat. Then do some basic freshman physics arithmetic with the relevant calories, Joules, and Watts and discover that NO WAY can power California traffic, especially LA traffic, without gas stations. Not a chance. And the big push for Greenie energy would kill the idea even if rolled out enough coal, natural gas, and nuclear gigawatts of power actually to charge the car batteries quickly.Conclusion: Such VC prognostications are essentially public intellectual self abuse apparently intended just to get publicity for deal flow. But no capable entrepreneur would be fooled; maybe VCs who were history majors and did some startup marketing would be fooled.Or, some entrepreneur could come up with pitch decks for ML, crypto, and electric cars and see that no VC firm, not A16Z, any firm on Sand Hill Road, any firm in CA, Boston, or NYC, would respond at all. Not a chance.VCs do NOT, will NOT, fund far out, seat of the pants, futurist, prognostication projects. And any startup entrepreneur who pursues such directions is a four letter FOOL.Instead, VCs have a much simpler model: Look for startups with significant revenue, growing very quickly, with at least something as a barrier to entry, in a large poorly served market, for now, likely having to do with computing and the Internet, and desperate for a check. That is, the VCs are funding what they can see in a pitch deck and online NOW and just f’get about all prognostications.More generally, by a wide margin, the people most able to see good directions for the future, that is, a successful startup for at least the next 5 years, are the tiny fraction of lucky or very well informed, bright, etc. entrepreneurs and NOT the VCs getting their “deep domain knowledge” from scanning pitch decks. Again VC futurist prognostications are a form of public intellectual self-abuse.Or, we know very well how to do high end technology from the many good examples: Edison and electric lighting and the power grid to go with it. Ford and the Model T and internal combustion engines. IBM and computers, instead of electro mechanical punched card machines, about 1960. Lockheed and airplanes starting a little before WWII. The Manhattan Project and the Bomb, “The hydrogen bomb, Dimitri”. The Boeing B-29, Tinian, and the atomic bomb. The SR-71 and especially its engines. GPS. Spread spectrum radar encrypted with shift register sequences. At Bell Labs, the transistor, Ga-Al-As hetero-junction solid state lasers and associated optical fibers, and digital error detection and correction algebraic coding theory. Packet switched networks (IP) with error detection and correction only between the origin and the final destination.These accomplishments were from very conservative, realistic, strongly driven, solid applied math, science, and engineering with no, none, nichts, nil, nada, zip, zilch, zero futurist prognostications.

          2. Richard

            And there is more..none relied on small sample sizes (with large standard errors) that fished for a p-value.

          3. sigmaalgebra

            Yup, there is too much sloppy work, even with elementary statistics for important problems.But people are getting reminded that new experimental results need to be REPLICATED.

          4. PhilipSugar

            No, If he was getting paid his point of view would not be pure. See Gartner or Forrester. Might be “talking his book” but not charging me to do it, I get to choose.

          5. LE

            He is getting ‘paid’ it’s by A16z and this is branded under their flag. So what is the axe here exactly for doing this and giving it away at no charge and doing conferences?

          6. JamesHRH

            marketing ther firm.

      5. Richard

        Great commment. Even as an inside investor and a board seat holder, I don’t remember a16z pounding the buy table on FBs move into mobile or more recently the how alibabas / tencent specifically are going to impact the world (XChina).

      6. someone

        Doesnt seem fast to me eitherStill, stopped at “gas stations will go away in 20 years’ LOL

      7. thinkdisruptive

        re: predicting disruption.Yes, it was actually quite easy. The challenge is not the mechanics of disruption and predicting when it will happen (or the probability that it will happen, more precisely), but understanding that it is the market to be disrupted that is critical. Disruption is always relative to something, so if you misidentify the market, you will usually get the wrong prognosis too (as Christensen has done with every missed call, including the iPod, iPhone and Uber).See: http://disrpt.me/iPhone_pre…Note that this article also predicts the sales ramp accurately, describes why the iPhone will outperform (future tense because this was written before release of iPhone 1), predicts the App Store more than 6 months before Apple pre-announced it and more than a year before it existed, and other things that seem obvious in retrospect.What’s strange to me is that 4 years after the iPhone launch, RIM (Blackberry) was still oblivious and predicting that they would win because they had the right strategy!?

  12. William Mougayar

    Good alternative to Mary Meeker’s 400 slides one. 😉

  13. Andrew Cashion

    The “thing” part was good.And +10 points for having an English accent.

  14. PhilipSugar

    I think it was great. They called my mother “Speedy Gonzales” (cartoon character, I know not PC) when she taught. (she passed 16 years ago) It is like how I type.

    1. LE

      You don’t have an average brain you have a superior brain. The typical audience (see my other comment) is left in the dust by this. It’s fine (and desirable) to talk fast if the topic is well known by both parties. Then it’s efficient. If it’s not then it’s simply not the right thing to do.My question to Benedict (in my reply to his reply to me) was who is the target audience for this information.

      1. PhilipSugar

        Why should he care if you are not in his target audience?Yes I should have pointed out I strongly disagree with gasoline stations going away in 20 years.Tesla might be nice at 200k cars per year for all models. But F150’s sold 1mm this year, Chevy Silverado 800k, Dodge Ram 500k, that is 10 to 1 not counting SUV’s. As you know from my 2001 they last 20 years.This also explains why Walmart will continue to do well. People plain and simple like going there (although I made a joke I get dumber when I go there and my kids say it is true) But where else do you buy a Mossy Oak Camouflage Thinsulate Waterproof Jacket for $20? (Yes I’m sure it was made in China)

        1. LE

          Why should he care if you are not in his target audience?Not me but the collective group of people listening to this either in the audience (of various levels of interest and competence) as well as on the web, assuming part of the reason for doing it in the first place is marketing and pr. That is why he should care.Look put ass on table here. Tech is totally into the idea of talking a different language it’s baked into the way they make themselves feel important and get back at everyone by making them feel stupid. But that is not selling. It’s obnoxious. What tech does. Not Benedict.Apple has become (in part) wildly successful because they realized what everyone else was doing wrong and fixed that. Like traditionally other companies didn’t even see programming a VCR as a big problem ‘just read the manual’.You know how I got started buying the things that I bought and make money from now? I was just able to use the form that was required to buy them. I was able to charge others because they didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to use the form to register. Yes it was that simple. And I was able to tack on $30 or $40 of profit for just filling out a form. It would have been trivial for the people (with the form with the NSF contract) to make it easy. But they were computer types and did not see a reason for doing so.

  15. PhilipSugar

    The only big thing I disagree with you about is think about the number of SKU’s of Lidl and Aldi. They are killing Sainsbury’s, Kroger, and Safeway.

  16. LE

    My presentation is a set of data and ideasHate to cherry pick this apart but in the first minute and a half I find a few actual charts (with small attribution in the lower corner of source) based on ‘set of data’ and then some things that you have an opinion on. Your opinion. Which as I said is not really any better than many other’s opinion to the contrary. You say for example (at roughly 1.3′ in):gas stations for example are going to transform and perhaps completely disappear over the next 20 years20 years? You then also say something that is roughly similar (in the same time frame) about cars and parts. Will pretty much disappear. Sorry I am not exactly quoting but that is what you are saying, right? You are not backing that up with any data.Where are you getting all this from? You don’t live where I live or no way you would think that gas stations, cars and parts and pretty much not going to be around or to be so nominal (generously) to not matter. A drop? Sure I agree with that. But nothing even close to disappear (in 20 years your number).I do have one question for you. Who is the target audience for this and what is the reason for doing this presentation? Who are you trying to sell? If you are trying to sell you need to spend time on the delivery.This is how I talk. It doesn’t seem fast to me. Press pause.The fact that you talk fast (something I like typically) is totally inappropriate given the likely target audience and the reason you are doing this in the first place. Have you ever done any selling? Would you like it if you went to buy tile for your house and the salesman blew by you at the speed that you are talking about topics that you didn’t understand? Of course not. Well that’s how this comes across to a typical person (even Fred) when viewing this. You can’t just say ‘sorry I talk fast’.I will make you an offer. Next time you do something like this I will spend my time (which I have little of) to help you with what you are doing so that it comes across as more understandable to a wider audience. I am saying this because I don’t want to offer my thoughts here and not have skin in the game. Feel free to contact me by email it’s easy to find that. Impossible that I can’t help you improve on this.

  17. Lawrence Brass

    Can you share the slides?

  18. jason wright

    “It doesn’t seem fast to me.” If you’re trying to communicate a set of data and ideas it’s worth considering if the ‘hearer’ thinks it is fast and too fast. piano piano. a successful resume can become that golden cage a person by choice traps themselves inside. i agree.