Dispatch #20 | Disruption due diligence, why 45 years old is the perfect entrepreneurial age and a miniscule computer
DISPATCH #20 FROM THE OUTPOST OF POSSIBILITY
28_06_18
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Disruption due diligence, why 45 years old is the perfect entrepreneurial age and a miniscule computer
Welcome to this Dispatch from the Outpost of Possibility.
Sweden is on a high as a nation this week, in the afterglow of Midsommar festivities and the unexpected success of their national football team. Even without such revelry I’m struggling to see how this Bloomberg article can paint such a pessimistic view of how Swedes are feeling about the welfare state.
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Starter for ten
Nellie Bowles writes in the NYT about the unintended consequences of smart home technologies – as tools for domestic abuse.
New companies or companies’ new products shouldn’t constrain their growth by being afraid of every possible use case for their technology. But they should at the very least map out the worst case scenarios and mitigate against them.
It’s time for some proper Disruption Due Diligence.
Startup Notes
Starting with experience
You’ve still got time. Whatever your age. Among the very fastest-growing new tech companies, the average age of the founder was 45 at the time of founding. Furthermore, a given 50-year-old entrepreneur is nearly twice as likely to have a runaway success as a 30-year-old.
Valuation investing
Another interesting blog from Fred Wilson on the Valuation Obsession.
Disrupt or be Disrupted
Healthcare, interrupted
Bold ideas attract extraordinary people. Atul Gawande is extraordinary, and he has landed perhaps the most extraordinary (or impossible) job in health care.
Fishy business
Clean fish is now a thing. Finless Foods has just raised $3.5 million – here is some background from Forbes from a couple of months ago.
Technology
May I, um, record you?
I was a bit sceptical of the ethics of an AI assistant speaking to people on your behalf when Google showcased Duplex a while ago and this Techcrunch piece that looks further into the technology shows that Google is grappling with some of the issues.
Quantum of solace
I’ve mentioned how exciting quantum computing is previously and quantum geeks have been searching for years for a type of problem that a quantum computer can solve but that any possible future classical computer cannot. Now they’ve found one.
Rice click your mouse
A computer that is smaller than a grain of rice.
Impact Notes
Discovering what matters
The Dementia Discovery Fund has raised a further $350M for disease-modifying drugs. Alliance funds seeking non-drug related investments would be a wonderful addition.
Emerson therapy
WaPo has done a fascinating piece on Laurene Powell Jobs’ attempts to “invent a new brand of philanthropic power.”
Timewasters
Photo fans
With the World Cup on, I presume you have no time for timewasters. Fans of the 2018 World Cup
Onwards / Forward
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Here’s to what’s possible.
All the best,
Dom