Category: entrepreneurship

The type of thinking needed in exponential times

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Busy road with fumes

If you could choose a house on a busy road, or a quiet road in the same suburb, and price was not an issue, the choice is simple – the quiet road wins every time. And we all know why – less pollution, less noise, less danger. Oh, and quieter streets are usually nicer to look at. The prices of real estate reflect this. A house of similar quality on a busier road can be as much as 50% cheaper.

So here’s a question worth thinking about: What happens to those property prices when all cars have electric engines, and they don’t have tail pipes? You guessed it – there is almost no noise and no localised pollution. Surely then, the prices of houses in busy streets will go up and bridge the existing pricing gap somewhat. In the next 10 years significant amounts of money will be made in property by arbitraging the positive impact of electric cars.

It’s economic plays like this that are easy to see once we start thinking about the impact of the technology, and not the technology itself.

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Do this instead of trying to keep up

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Vector heads

Keeping up these days is impossible. There’s too much new of everything to be on top of it all. More important than that though, it’s a total waste of time. Knowing all the news is not nearly as important as understanding the trajectory. Here;’s a far better plan than trying to keep up: tapping into the best minds out there. A sharp mind can help us think, provide a philosophical framework, and understand the changes that matter in the fields we care about. You’ll also find they become a shortcut – when something is gathering momentum or a big issue drops, they’ll have you covered.

Once you start listening to serious thinkers, you’ll see what they have to say is rarely about what happened moments ago, and more about where we are going and what matters on that journey. Here’s short list of some of the minds I tap into in this wonderful world of access to get you started:

Cory Doctorow

Ray Kurzweil

Seth Godin

Kevin Kelly

Mike Monteiro

Jeremy Rifkin

Tim O’Reilly

Matt Mullenweg

William Gibson

News is disposable. Direction is valuable.

 

Why I'm using Snapchat

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Snapchat Billboard

I got message from Richard on Linkedin regarding my use of Snapchat recently: here it is below:

Steve, I noticed around the time of this post you started posting about the benefits of Snapchat, rather than promoting your book. I get it, especially for connecting to the next generation. I also get that Snapchat is a whole new, exciting landscape & way of connecting that’s diff. to other social. I’d to hear more about why you’ve made the switch and have started on it as a platform. Only so many hours in the day. Pls explain why time on this is good for startups. Listened to https://lnkd.in/bXKk5D4 but would love YOUR take 🙂

Here’s my response:

Hey Richard,

Props for paying attention to my stuff and thanks for reading. I started to mix it up a bit at the bottom of my blog posts. Still some book, but mostly snapchat. My book, I promote less because it is getting old and I’m writing my next one… is all. The reason for Snapchat is that Twitter has very little engagement these days. I have nearly 7000 genuine followers on twitter, I never chased a follow ever, all came to me. I get about 300 people with the opportunity to see my tweets, about 7 looks or so click or engage – Pathetic. With Snapchat in just a few weeks I get around 50 engagements. People literally looking at my story. Snap is simply replacing my twitter. But more than that, we need to be nimble and change forums when the disco gets too crowded and noisy and no one can hear each other speak. For me it’s not about connecting to the next generation, it’s more that my generation are now using Snapchat – it’s my old twitter audience changing which nightclub they dance in….Another reminder that we need to be loyal to our audience, and not worry about the forum or the way they want to connect. I was an early Naysayer of Snapchat and it’s value. But their ‘My Story’ feature (24 hours of snaps) changed it’s value proposition for me – and when the facts change, I change my mind.  In fact, I’m gonna blog this…. trust you’re Ok with that… 🙂

Steve.

P.S – If this blog disappears quickly, it’s because Richard wasn’t ok with it! 

Software is eating the world – and surfing

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

The picture below is of surfboard fins. These days they are not permanently attached to the surfboard, but screw in. This allows surfers to change fin sizes and shape for different surf, it also allows you to travel with out busting them.

3D Printed Surfboard fins

The fins on the left come from a company called FCS and they retail for $140. The fins on the right came off a 3D printer and cost exactly zero dollars, well maybe $3 in raw in materials. In general fins sell for between $100 and $200.

Sure the FCS fins on the left look fancy and are made from carbon fibre, the 3D printed versions above are various plastics, but in many ways they are better. I can print fins quickly and cheaply with varying degrees of flex. I can print fins with more flex at the top and less at the bottom, I can even add other technology to the fins like a GPS, to track my surfing without wearing a bulky watch. I can customise my design on my fins, the colour, create personal branding anything, sell my designs to other surfers….the options are endless, and the cost is negligible. That said, I can print fins in carbon fibres, light metals and pretty much any material I want.

It won’t be long before the days of buying expensive fins are over. 

These fin companies are less than 20 years old, and unless they facilitate 3D printing of their product, they’ll be disrupted – maybe me and my new surfing company Sneaky Surf. Mind you this company (FCS) was recently bought by Surf Stitch for $23.7 million. I hope they get their money back quick or it will be a classic diworsification. If they paid a 10 times price earning ratio, they’ll never get their money back. I reckon within 3 years no one will buy fins again.

If you make any widget like the example above, or buy them, then the time is now to move to 3D printed versions. You don’t even need to own a printer – there are plenty of startups on line who can print your designs for you and ship them to you customers. GO – this opportunity to dematerialise a category (like music was dematerialised) is big. We all know that software is eating the world – Make it happen in your industry.

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The consequences of good & bad design

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

This is another fantastic presentation from Mike Monteiro on the importance of design and how it shapes our world lives. Here Mike takes us through how designers at Facebook have had massive consequences on peoples lives, especially when it comes to privacy settings.

As entrepreneurs we are essentially systems designers. Our goal should be to should improve things for people – solve a problem through system design. Whether or not we are pixel pushers is not important, we are designers. I seriously want you (and I know you will as my thoughtful readers) watch this instead of some pointless Tv this weekend. I promise it’ll be worth your time. Enjoy.

 

 

A world before the World Wide Web?

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s a documentary I want to see. Two families living life as it was were before the world wide web arrived. For most homes that was some time during the 1990’s. I imagine life is very different for teenagers, toddlers and parents today compared to say in 1985. We’ve all seen the documentaries comparing life in the distant past – this farming one living like it’s 1885 comes to mind. But how would today compare to just 30 years ago – 1986 to 2016?

I think we’d find it is more different than we remember or younger people expect. I’d love to see a house, school, shopping, media, politics, transport systems all set up to run the experiment with a family or two. Document it – compare it to our modern economy and boom – compelling viewing

Someone go make it – it’s a cool idea for free. I’m sure a production company or TV station would love it.

You can thank me at the award ceremony.

Love, Stevie.

 

Imagine if you had all the power in the world

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

IBM Watson

In 2011 IBM’s Watson an Artificial Intelligence unit famously won a 100 game set of jeopardy against human world champions. It was really the first time an A.I. had beaten humans in a multidimensional association test. Intelligence through inference, cognitive computing and natural language rather than mere brute force calculation and probability sets. That said, there was plenty of brute force behind Watson. Here’s some of stats from how Watson was configured at that time in 2011:

  • It had 3000 Power7 processors.
  • A cluster of 90 IBM Power 750 servers.
  • It could read the equivalent of 1 million books per second.
  • It had downloaded the entire content of Wikipedia.
  • It was not connected to the internet for the competition.
  • It was the size of a small conference room. (above)

But this was all 5 years ago. Now its the size of 3 pizza boxes.

3 Pizza Boxes stacked

Imagine if us mere mortals and startup founders could access such computing power. Well, we can, Watson is already in the cloud.

Anyone can access it’s incredible power through the Watson Developer cloud. It even includes 30 day free trials – 30 days with the worlds most powerful A.I. – I can remember when an internet cafe used to charge $20 an hour for dial up to surf sites like GeoCities and Altavista. You can check out all the ways it’s being used here. You’ll see there are incredible opportunities for all manner of business, data usage and cognitive assistance.

This opportunity simply can’t be understated. Yes, IBM benefit from the work you do (it makes Watson smarter) and it will cost money, but heck, you’re getting access to the most powerful thing of it’s kind in the world.

It turns out that while some companies continue to get stronger and more ensconced in our lives – think GAFA, there’s still a move towards democratisation if we care enough to dig around.

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