Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…A hundred percent. Actually, two other tech themes I wanted to lump together and cover quickly. I don’t think answering that question but furthering the context for it, one is sort of market timing and waves and I think the P.A. Semi history illustrates this so perfectly. We talk about on the show so often, we covered in our 2016 review episode, the key to startup and venture capital is targeting the big market at the right time, and the right time of the wave. Apple with the iPhone just got it so right. Probably the most right of any sort of combination of size and timing of waves and history with the smartphone market, like technology had just gotten to the point and consumer willingness to adopt had just gotten to the point where it was possible. The first processor in the first iPhone was like, I think it was 416 megahertz, I believe, from Samsung and like it was just barely enough to make the thing work. But it was just barely enough. But now as the market has matured and we’ve got a chip in our iPhones that literally is as powerful as a Mac Pro a couple years ago, how much more power do we need? We’re at a mature point, at least a maturing point in the smartphone market. Then the other theme I wanted to tie that to is just like both of these acquisitions are total Clayton Christensen sustaining innovations, not disruptive innovations. They are sustaining this wave that Apple is on. But as you pointed out with your question, the critical question for the tech industry for us as investors, as startups, as people working in it right now is what is the next wave? Because this past wave that we’ve been riding of mobile and smartphones while being the largest and most prolific in history, it’s mature now. It’s crusting. Yeah. The title of that book and the phrase “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” starts to come to mind where we’re going to get into grading here in a minute, but having their own in-house silicon and to a lesser extent security features, gave Apple a lot of advantages to keep their experienced lead over Samsung and other Android manufacturers and to really be able to produce the best quality, most differentiated experienced phones. I think that was hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that we can attribute to that. But looking around and as the dust starts to settle today and looking at what’s next, I am not convinced that actually sets Apple up for the future in a wave that matters in the next wave of experiences. Completely agree. Especially if the next wave of experiences are primarily machine learning driven, data and data science driven, and most importantly as a result of that, service driven innovations. Not hardware, not software but service driven innovations. That is not in Apple’s DNA.…

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