Legendary venture capitalist Michael Moritz gave an interesting presentation at a recent tech show titled The Personal Revolution. His slide show in embedded below.
The theme of the presentation is the economy is moving to "data factories" that create tools and products that make it easier to start a small business. Key quote from a Tech Crunch article on the talk:
The tools and platforms listed above have given way to a “personal revolution” that’s delivered unprecedented productivity and reach to small businesses and entrepreneurs. You don’t need nearly as much money to start a business anymore. Moritz gave a slew of examples of people who made small fortunes selling sleds on Amazon, becoming makeup spokeswomen on YouTube, becoming best-selling authors via Kindle, or earning huge real estate commissions through Trulia.
Moritz also covered the downsides of this shift. Another quote on the outlook for people who aren't highly educated and/or highly skilled in ways attractive to data factory companies like Google and Facebook:
“It means that life is very tough for most everyone in America” says Moritz. That’s not just some ambiguous sense of hardship. The median American household has stagnated. The absolute minimum wage value has decreased significantly. “It’s tough if you’re poor, it’s tough if you’re middle class. It means you have to have the right education to work at [the tech giants]. If you’re not like us, it’s tough” said the highly successful venture capitalist.
Regular readers of this blog are familiar with these themes, but Moritz presents them with flair.
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