Tell HN: PG's Trends List from BOS 2009 | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: PG's Trends List from BOS 2009

55 pointsjavery30 comments

PG just finished his talk at Business of Software 2009 where he listed trends he would bet on and trends he would stay away from. Here are my hopefully correct notes:

-Trends to bet on-

Innovation

Software

Efficient Markets - More information leads to a new efficient market.

Measurement - You make what you measure.

United States

Silicon Valley

Small Companies

Economic Inequality

Moore's Law

Things on Screens

Server based apps

Super Good Customer Service

Apparently Frivolous Stuff (facebook)

Programming Languages

Open Source

Linux will never be a factor on the desktop

iPhone

Design

Real-Time

Venture Funding

Founders

-Things not to bet on-

Credentials based on institutions (degrees)

Business School

The Government changing

Restricted flow of information (everything is getting more liquid)

View on HN

Presumably PG will the full text of his talk on his website in a couple days, as he has with all the others. Is there anything gained by reading this list of bullet points a couple days in advance? This doesn't seem particularly time sensitive.

And frankly a bit obvious for anyone visiting this site.

I have to say that this talk played out basically exactly like pg's "List of N Things" article (http://www.paulgraham.com/nthings.html). In particular, these quotes seemed apt: "a few main points with few to no subordinate ones, and no particular connection between them", and "I use it when I get close to a deadline. If I have to give a talk and I haven't started it a few days beforehand, I'll sometimes play it safe and make the talk a list of n things".

It wasn't very useful, or interesting, and just seemed like a talk for the sake of giving a talk, with maybe years of knowledge behind it, but very little useful or new information actually conveyed.

very little useful or new information actually conveyed

Really? So e.g. the scifi test, the point about design and open source, hotels and efficient markets, the unified theory of the decline of empires, and economic inequality following automatically from higher resolution were all things you'd already thought about? They were all surprises to me.

It's interesting that although this list seems a little vague, other than "iPhone" I'd argue that this would have been just as accurate 10 years ago.

Does anyone know if the BOS talks are going to be available online?

Dharmesh Shah (OnStartups) has a bit more detail in his twitter feed:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=&ands=&phrase=%23...

If you can't bet on the government change, you can certainly bet on copyright remaining as is and/or becoming more restrictive.

Copyright reform is our collective wet dream, but there are powerful, powerful organizations and a lot of jobs riding on continued restrictions. It's the trade tariff of the 21st century, and it isn't going anywhere without a serious fight.

I wouldn't be surprised if copyright laws get more restrictive yet less enforceable. The result is that you can't bet on copyright actually working.

Can't bet on and should bet against are not the same thing.

> you can certainly bet on copyright remaining as is and/or becoming more restrictive

In the short term, you're right. Gvoernment's aren't going to abolish copyright, or significantly loosen it. On the contrary, the MPAA/RIAA is pushing them to impose a new and more restrictive copyright regime (3-strikes, ACTA treaty, etc).

But, computers and the internet make perfect digital copying machines. And no government can afford to ban them, it it wants to continue to have an economy.

So, over the next 10 years: more restrive copyright, less well enforced, with enforcement becoming totally impractical

Eventually the rise of pirate parties will force governments to scrap the increasingly restrictive copyright laws. But as you say the "powerful, powerful organizations" will fight this every step of the way. Eventually, however, we'll win -- history is on our side -- and in their bones they know it too.

PG is absolutely dead wrong on betting the Government won't change. At the end of the day, the Government is STARVING for innovative technical solutions, new ways to communicate with people and getting validated online. There's a ton of money to be made on great, smart tech to sell to Government. And if you're a start-up, you ought to be thinking about whether your product is useful to government.

Whether that's change or not, I don't know. But what I do know is, a year ago, two years ago, three years ago the Government could care less about the Internet or how it interacted with constituents online. Now it can't stop talking about it.

Only having read this list, I took the "Government Won't Change" theme to mean that overall policy direction won't change wildly. Will the US ever have completely open immigration? Will it become significantly more libertarian? Will the balance of power between the Federal government and the states change significantly? I would not bet on any of these in the next twenty or thirty years.

I think the word "Government" is too vague.

If by government you mean elected officials. Then they will be very interested in anything that can produce more votes or money for them. I think the Obama campaign changed how a lot of officials view the internet.

If by government you mean, established lobbyist with things to lose. There will certainly be a resistance to change and innovation.

Overall, this list is probably too vague to start debating it.

McDonalds also recognizes the power of the Internet and they make extensive use of it, but I wouldn't say anything fundamental has changed about their business. I think the government's in the same boat, just 5-10 years behind.

You might be interested in knowing the McDonalds has experimented with telepresense. They thought about making booths with something equivalent to skype with a big TV, so people at two McDonalds locations (presumably family) could have a meal together.

Does the term Government encompass the U.S. "Defense" industry? How about "Health Care"? Ignore the current health care bill(s) debate -- there's plenty of opportunity just getting medical records online securely.

Whether there are startup opportunities therein is another question.

Not being there, I couldn't tell if pg was addressing startup opportunities, or general business opportunities. Or if there's any difference between the two.

If you are right about the government starving for innovative technical solutions, it is hard for me to envision how startups can help with this. I see government, in its smallest procurement/technological acquisition like the enterprise solutions, and at biggest, military-scale procurement efforts.

The great, smart tech sell to the government would be of what is called the "long sell" variety, where the sales cycle is measured in years.

This might be me being a nitpicker... but how does being able to bet on "Innovation... Software... Things on Screens... Programming Languages" help anyone? Are these things that were up for debate?

The useful things in here are the bold predictions, such as Linux never being a factor on the desktop, and not betting on things like business school and government change.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I should also clarify that I'm not commenting on the fact that this list was posted in its entirety, just on the list itself. I appreciate it being posted for us to review.

Yes, they're up for debate, because at many times in the last 20 years people have had very different opinions on all those topics. People who grew up with the current trends find it hard to see, but read some late-80s business magazine articles for a different perspective. Back then, the trends were B-school, investment banking, investing in lowering production cost, consumer brand marketing, selling razor blades, etc. Few people thought you could make a huge business in software. Many of those trends changed. I think Paul's claim is that the trends he mentions are good long-term bets.

Obviously words like "software" and "innovation" are not by themselves very informative, because they're just titles. How do you feel about what I said about these topics?

I see what you mean, and I haven't been able to find a full text of what was said about each topic. Out of context, I saw each point as an unsubstantiated claim that was part of a single, larger point. There wasn't an indication that each of those had a complete discussion following.

If those were points gleaned from a larger discussion of "things to bet on", then I stand by my original statement. However, I'd look forward to seeing what was said in particular if each of those was a specific topic of discussion.

My guess is, these were the overarching "themes". It's the context and reasoning that makes them insightful. Hoping more in depth notes or a video from the conference makes itself online.

Is there a video/audio recording available on The Internet?

They are recording the talks (big camera behind me) and I think they get posted after the conference.

"Apparently Frivolous Stuff (facebook)"..? I'd love to hear more elaboration on that.

He was saying that facebook on the surface seems very frivolous, its basically online gossip at first glance. But there is huge potential in it and that things that can appear frivolous can have huge potential. (twitter falls in this category too)

I wasn't at the talk - was there anything he said that particularly surprised you? The list above looks like the fairly standard list of "what's going on now"...

>Linux will never be a factor on the desktop

Never?

Not as a desktop at least. If a device comes with OpenOffice, it's going to fail with consumers. If it's even possible to natively port OOo (if it uses an X server), the outlook is not good.

ChromeOS is extremely promising in this regard.

Never, ever, ever?

Even as I write this from my Ubuntu 9.10 machine while coding ruby in emacs in the other screen space because Unix based development is so much easier than Visual Studios++?

Even though http://digg.com/linux_unix/the_PERFECT_mp3_player_for_Linux_... has 1000+ diggs and is the only reason my coworker is buying a specific mp3 player amongst the hundreds of options?

Even though Linux can be downloaded for $0, and in most of the non-western work, more than $300 dollars for an entire computer, let alone operating system, is stretching a very thin family budget?

In my view Windows is good for 2 things. Running Excel and computer games. And even that is starting to change. http://www.worldofgoo.com/ is fully Linux compliant, and even the boys and girls making Natural Selection 2 are talking about making a Linux version.

Hell, even most of the awesomest games have been ported through wine (like Team Fortress II). Microsoft will always be around, but more in the way that IBM will always be around. It's only a matter of time before Google makes the web browser so dominant and piracy makes non-SaaS based software so unprofitable that it won't matter whether you use an NT kernel (or Direct X whatever) or not. Flash is, hopefully, going to go the way of the dinosaur as HTML 5 comes out, and by that point what is the value proposition that Microsoft has? "Ugh, our software can run a really freaking awesome spreadsheet program!" Excel is great. I'd dual boot it if it were an operating system.

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