We had a discussion today at work about a strategic decision facing the business.  We were debating the merits of a couple opportunities ahead of us trying to decide which one we want to tackle.  I have been thinking about these opportunities for some time and felt like I had a solid argument for why one decision was the right one as well as why the other option should be shelved for the time being.  We had a fruitful debate at lunch, but I afterward was pulled aside and reminded that while I had done a good job of articulating my views I also left one glaring hole in my argument, I had neglected to explain the potential pitfalls of the option I favored.  I felt like an idiot.

Not only is tearing down your own ideas a healthy and essential part of successful decision making it also instills confidence in those around you.  Our natural tendency is to argue in favor of what we support while poking holes in what we oppose.  In order to really grasp the issue at hand and instill confidence in your team that you have thought more deeply about a topic than anyone else, you need to be able to do the opposite as well.  That means taking the time to both understand the strengths of someone else’s argument as well as the weaknesses in your own.  You'll know you've done this when you can more clearly articulate your opponents argument better than they can.    

Every year at Christmas dinner my family puts together a list of things each of us want to accomplish next year, then the following Christmas we sit down and see how much progress we made.  A lot of what each of us works towards is either trying to form new habits or break bad ones.  The exercise (which I love) has forced me to think about how to build good habits.

I am convinced that good habits are formed incrementally, not overnight.  It comes in installments; you get a little bit today, a little bit tomorrow, bit by bit you form the habit until it becomes second nature.  Habits are formed in the mundanity of every day life when no one is watching or reminding you how to act.  Being a better family member isn’t about grand gestures of affection, it comes from taking two minutes to call you parents to say hi when a childhood memory pops into your mind.  It’s about taking a detour home to say hi to your brothers when all you want to do is get home and relax.  All of those little gestures build up over time and before you know it you perform them without having to remind yourself that you're working towards being a better family member.      

I will be the first to admit that the routine of every day life can sometimes annoy me much more than it should.  The mother on a flight with a kid that won't stop crying, long lines at the grocery store filled with selfish people who are preventing me from getting home or having the wrong food brought out at a restaurant.  Small things that all lead to an insane amount of petty frustration that is shared by just about everyone at one time or another.  Its really hard to not let things like that get to me even though I realize how absurd it is to think that I am the center of the universe, but every once in a while the universe kicks you in the ass and reminds you of that fact.

My grandpa has been fighting cancer for a few years and has unfortunately been in the hospital for about a week straight.  Naturally, my grandma, his wife of over 50 years has refused to leave his side.  She is 80 years old and hates driving but has made exceptions over the past week to drive to and from the hospital before it gets dark out (when no one else can drive her).  The image of her driving is the is the same image that would normally drive me bonkers.  Why is this old woman slowing down the pace of traffic?  She is forcing everyone around her to change lanes! Why is she even driving at her age?  Just get off the fucking road and let me get home! It's an inner monologue I've had more than once.  But today I remembered that that old woman slowing down the pace of traffic was going to be my grandma.  And I remembered that my grandma prefers not to drive but she just spent the last 10 hours in the hospital with her husband and wants to get a few hours of sleep. I remembered that there are a lot of grandmas out there in similar positions and my frustration at them is completely unwarranted.  And I remembered that there are going to be a million other situations like that in our lives and we would all be better served if we remember that the universe doesn't revolve around us.

P.S.

To anyone  driving behind my grandma tonight, I apologize! 

Diversity in tech has become one of the most talked about topics in the tech community over the last several years, and rightfully so.  An overwhelming amount of evidence suggests that organizations function better when the decision-making process includes a diverse set of stakeholders.  Beyond corporate self-interest I, like so many others, believe that at the end of the day fostering diversity is also the right thing to do.  With that said there are still some questions I have yet to see answered: 

1. At what point does a company become sufficiently diverse?  Basically when can a company be looked at as a shining example of a diverse organization?
2. How are we qualifying diversity?  Do you have to be a woman or black to make an organization more diverse?  It seems like some people want a specific type of diversity.    There are a ton of great engineers coming to the US from eastern Europe, do they count even though they're white?  What about Asians and Indians? I'm stealing a little bit from Marc Andreessen here.
3. How should tech companies balance all of the stakeholders involved in the diversity process?  Each cause (women, African American's, minorities, etc) has their own agenda and are pushing companies for more inclusion.  How does a company strike a balance?
4. For all of the criticism the tech industry faces when it comes to diversity are we giving the leaders of these organizations enough credit for both admitting there is a problem and being much more open about their diversity statistics relative to other industries (think financial services)?  

I guess what I'm struggling with is for all the data points being tossed around to prove how homogeneous tech companies are it seems like very few people have come out and said "this is where we want companies to be when measuring diversity." 

I've been spending a lot of time over the last few months, listening, reading and thinking about the public/private tech landscape.  It's become clear that for a number of reasons including increased compliance/regulatory/reporting requirement, shrot-term focused public markets and risk aver shareholders companies are being incentivized to stay private longer.  

I wanted to look at a corporate governance mechanism being talked about and used by many of the major technology companies that have gone (Facebook, Google) or will go public, the dual-class stock structure. It basically gives a small number of employees, usually co-founders and management something like 2-1 or 10-1 voting rights, which allows them to retain a majority control of their company after going public.  To quote Marc Andreessen, it allows founders to "create a fortress" around their company, in turn they are able to operate without  having to bow to pressure from activist investors and mutual funds  (are all shareholders created equal is an entirely different question).  They can reinvest in growth instead of eating themselves via dividends and buybacks.  This emergence of dual-class stock structures is a natural consequence of the hostile, short-term public market environment and I believe when practiced wisely it will allow companies to innovate, plan for the long term, and make bets on new untapped markets.  Basically, do all the things we want tech companies to do. 

This isn't just important for the employees and shareholders of tech companies but for all of us who rely on them to drive the outsized returns in the public markets and more importantly to improve the human condition over time.    The more companies that can invest in growth the better off humanity is in the long run.  I believe you could go as far as to argue that it is a moral imperative to foster as many innovative tech companies as possible because without growth democracy doesn't work.

I'd like to peer into the future and understand how prevalent dual-class stock companies will become?  Should we expect more of the hot tech IPO's to use this mechanism?  And if this type of corporate governance does become the norm what types of push-back is there going to be?  How will hedge funds, activist investors and mutual funds react?  They're obviously not going to like the lack of influence they can exert, but what could they/society do to buck the trend?  

It seems like everyone is jumping into the debate over how to classify people who drive for Uber and Lyft or work for Handy and the rest of the sharing economy.  Are they employees, contractors or some new middle ground we as a society are going to have to define?  I don't have any answers or proposals that have not already been tossed around, and I believe that the conversation is an important one for our country to have as technology erodes what employment means to millions of Americans.  This blog post isn't aimed at answering that question, but rather to suggest that we should reframe the debate and not allow it to be so Uber-centric.

When someone starts a conversation about the sharing economy their statement generally begins with some variation of the phrase "with companies like Airbnb and Uber."  It is shortsighted for us to use Uber as the proxy for the rest of the sharing economy because they are the most likely to eliminate their workers altogether.  If you believe that driverless cars will arrive in the not too distant future then it's certainly not a stretch to argue that Uber will be at the forefront of that movement.  Once that happens we won't need to classify their drivers because there won't be any drivers to protect.  The debate needs to be adjusted away from Uber and closer to  companies that don't have as clear a path to automating their workforce.  Instacart is going to have a much tougher times getting robots to go grocery shopping for all of us and Handy will require human skills for the foreseeable future as well.  Let's have the conversation but shift our attention away from Uber to companies that will actually have workers in the long run.

A friend of mine recently bought an Apple Watch and it’s been fun for all of us (roommates) to play around with it.  None of us have ever really interacted with a wearable for more than a few minutes, and certainly not one with as much functionality as the watch.  There were moments when I smiled and said “that’s pretty neat,” others where I though some functionality was missing and others yet when I was stumped trying to understand how to use it.

Putting those first few days of interaction with the Apple Watch in context I couldn’t help but feel that this type of technology is the future.  I am excited to see what types of killer apps people thinks up, which I fully expect as the watch is really a new medium. I predict that I will look back ten years from now and laugh at how little I understood about the technology and how dumb I must have looked trying to get it to work.  I think those first few interactions I’ve had with the watch will be very similar to the time many of us have spent trying to get one of our grandparents to understand how the iPhone works.  To us, it is so obvious and intuitive, but to them it is a foreign experience. 

I am a pretty big Apple fan and definitely see myself owning some type of wearable technology in a couple years, most importantly (to me) when the battery life improves, but I don’t think it’s an investment I will make anytime soon.  

I have used Instacart a few times and love it.  They've built a great product and I expect to see their business and others like it grow exponentially in the coming years.  With that said I have decided not to use their product (at least for the time being).  

I stopped using Instacart because it wasn't solving a real problem in my life.  I convinced myself that I had too much on my plate to bother going to the grocery store, but in the process realized that I was actually missing out on much more.  To be clear, my argument is not that Instacart and other on-demand services cannot be hugely beneficial.  My mother raised five sons and I am sure she would have happily paid a premium to have groceries delivered as she tried to balance everything running a family demands.  (As a side not I really don't know how mom's do what they do.  As I've gotten older I have started to appreciate what mom's everywhere sacrifice for their children, they are literally superheroes).  Some other obvious scenarios include persons who are snowed in or sick, elderly people who can't drive, or someone living with a disability.  The list could obviously go on, but it would not include me.    

Much of Instacart's initial traction came from/continues to come from catering to tech workers in San Francisco, New York and the like.  I am going to generalize here by saying that the demographics of these workers are males and females, under the age of 32 and single (or at least not married with kids). I  fall into this bucket.  Somehow we have all convinced ourselves that our lives/responsibilities are too great to find time to go to the  grocery store.  I told myself that ultimately Instacart would allow me to spend more time working.  That's bullshit.  Again, I am in my mid-twenties, no wife, no children and no real responsibilities outside of the office. Not only do I have time, but I think it's important that we all find time to get out there.  Does anybody love waiting in line at the grocery store? No.  But when we begin to cut those experiences out of our life what are we left with?  What is life without real human interaction?  Better yet where will real human interaction com from if all we do is shuffle between the office and our apartment?  Talk about living in a bubble.

How can we form comprehensive views of society if we don't actually experience it firsthand?  We can't work at the intersection of the humanities and technology if we don't experience the world around us.  Perhaps an even more troubling consequence of the "shut-in economy" is it effects on our ability to build great new companies.  By removing ourselves from the world we become less sensitive to the problems around us and the problems that need to be solved!  And if we don't experience those problems how can entrepreneurs build great new companies to solve them?  You'd just end up with a bunch of really smart/driven people optimizing processes they and everyone else in their bubble are dealing with. 

In general I think I have done a poor job of evaluating the tradeoffs of using these new services.  Someone to do your shopping, deliver your food, do you laundry, etc.  The gains in convenience are obviously immense, but you also run the risk of losing touch with reality.  In conclusion, I want to post a link to this scene in Goodwill Hunting, which has been on my mind the whole time I was trying to formulate this thesis. 

The concept of basic income has been around for quite some time, however it wasn't until the past few years that it has gained some real traction.  Admittedly it is something that is still very new to me, but as I continue to see more people talking and writing about the subject it's clear that the conversation is only going to grow louder.  One of the arguments frequently used by those who support a basic income is that by giving people a safety net they will be free to pursue their true passions and we would witness a renaissance of art, philosophy, literature, etc.  One the surface that sounds like a wonderful society to be a part of but is there any evidence to suggest that is actually how people would spend their time?  

Over the course of the last century, the average time a person in the developed world spends working during the week has decreased from 70 hours to 30 hours.  That's great news!  How has the developed world taken advantage of those new 30 hours?  To be blunt, we haven't, we spend 28 of them watching TV.  If these statistics are accurate they pose a troubling issue for anyone who supports basic income.  What happens if people are receiving that money and adding nothing positive to society?  What happens if there is so much content out there that the average person spends more time consuming it rather than going out and creating it.

Practically speaking full employment can be defined as follows, anyone who is interested in having a job can find one and anyone who wants to work more hours can get those hours.  I have always considered full employment to be unobtainable, something an economy should strive for but which could never be feasibly achieved.  Are we entering a world where that no longer the case?  

My central question is whether or not the sharing economy (Uber, TaskRabbit, Instacart) can actually get us to full employment?  As a side note, I realize that you need a car to drive for Uber or Instacart among some other basic prerequisites, but I want to stay focused on the bigger picture here.  All three of these companies allow individuals 1) The chance to earn income above the minimum wage 2) The ability to clock in and out of work at their convenience 3) Earn income directly proportional to the amount of time they are on the job.  Furthermore, they are looking to rapidly expand their workforce meaning as of today workers can add more hours whenever they want.  Phrased differently, these companies offer employment to almost anyone interested and give their employees a (nearly) endless amount of work to do.

I realize that working for these companies is not "work" in the traditional sense of the word, in Uber's case you are a contractor, not an employee, but I also doubt there are many companies on earth who are hiring as quickly as Uber is right now.  The impact these companies are having on society/the economy should also force us to rethink how we define and achieve our objectives.  My brother is currently in college driving for Uber on the side to make some extra cash, and while I couldn't tell you exactly what he is making per hour it is DEFINITELY over the minimum wage, and he gets to go to work whenever he wants.  For all the debating over exactly what an Uber driver can earn I suspect that everyone is earning above minimum wage salaries.  This new breed of companies gives (almost) anyone the ability to do the same.  I understand there are a whole range of issues that need to be resolved by these companies, their employees. and regulatory bodies, but at the end of the day shouldn't we praise companies who enable that type of workforce productivity?   

If you're at all interested in trying to understand how technology originates and evolves I couldn't recommend a better book than The Nature of Technology, by Brian Arthur. It's a fascinating read, and one which I expect to keep close by for years to come.  More to the point, there is a section in the book where Arthur is describing how innovation and competitiveness evolves in specific fields over time. He argues that technical expertise in a given field tends to be concentrated in a specific geographic region.  In making this argument he either knowingly or unknowingly perfectly summarizes why Silicon Valley is "Silicon Valley."  The excerpt goes:

"Real advanced technology-on the edge sophisticated technology-issues not from knowledge but from something I will call deep craft.  Deep craft is more than knowledge.  It is a set of knowings.  Knowing what is likely to work and what is not to work.  Knowing what methods to use, what principles are likely to succeed, what parameter values to use in a given technique.  Knowing who to talk to down the corridor to get things working, how to fix things that go wrong, what to ignore, what theories to look to.  This sort of craft-knowing takes science for granted and mere knowledge for granted.  And it derives collectively from a shared culture of beliefs, an unspoken culture of common experience."  

"It follows that once a region-or country for that matter-gets ahead in an advanced body of technology, it tends to get further ahead.  Success brings success, so that there are positive feedbacks or increasing returns to regional concentrations of technology."

If you think about entrepreneurship as a form of technology (which it is) Arthur's description of the concentration of technical expertise also perfectly describes how and why Silicon Valley is what it is today.  The positive feedback loop is not limited to one specific form of technology but rather to the process/practices/shared knowledge of building great companies.  To draw the analogy out even further, Arthur also makes a strong case for anyone who is long on Silicon Valley.

Brian Arthur's research into increasing returns is one of the most important methodologies for anyone trying to understand how technology is reshaping the modern global economy.  He argues that as software continues to eat the world the global economy will move from one of decreasing returns to one of increasing returns.  His basic premise was that up until about twenty years ago most industries were dominated by labor or the bulk processing of resources, everything from metals to lumber and retail goods to grains.  One of the principles of this type of industry is diminishing returns.  Diminishing returns hold that companies operating in those resource/labor intensive industries will eventually run into certain natural limitations (capacity or labor problems).  Those limitations create what economists call perfect competition or economic equilibrium, characterized by thin margins and multiple competitors.

Arthur goes on to argue that the modern economy is in the midst of a major transformation where knowledge has replaced labor, and where the products and services that get ahead first get even further ahead over time.  In Arthur's own words increasing returns

"are the tendency for that which is ahead to get further ahead, for that which loses advantage to lose further advantage. They are mechanisms of positive feedback that operate—within markets, businesses, and industries—to reinforce that which gains success or aggravate that which suffers loss. Increasing returns generate not equilibrium but instability: If a product or a company or a technology—one of many competing in a market—gets ahead by chance or clever strategy, increasing returns can magnify this advantage, and the product or company or technology can go on to lock in the market." 

You can already see the winner-take-most outcome in action.  Search is dominated by Google, online video by YouTube, professional networking by LinkedIn, social media by Facebook & Twitter, mobile OS by Apple & Google, e-commerce by Amazon and eBay.  So how does all of this effect wealth inequality?  

1) The shift from labor to knowledge-based economies puts a premium on workers who have access to high quality higher education.  Those who don't will be faced with fewer employment opportunities and will be forced to have their wages depressed in the face of increasing automation.  Although there is already a huge disparity in long-term earnings powers between college and non-college educated workers those differences will be compounded in the new economy.

2) This type of competitive environment will create monopolies across a ton of different industries, which Peter Thiel argues is actually a good thing.  While I agree with Peter's argument what happens if the companies grow through the use of AI, replacing human labor?

3) Companies will grow to become much larger today than any other time in history while employing fewer workers.  At its peak in 1979, GM employed over 600,000 workers in the US and over 800,000 worldwide.  Today, Apple, the world's largest company employs about 98,000 people and generated roughly $182 billion in revenue in 2014.  The wages for those highly coveted workers will continue to rise exponentially while the average American will be left with fewer opportunities for stable long-term employment.  It won't be long before a one-person start-up is sold for $1 billion.

(I'm sure there are many other effects that I am overlooking)

I see a world with more profits flowing to fewer companies, and where those companies employ a small percentage of the population than in previous years. And as a result of the characteristics that define an economy of increasing returns if will also be much harder for new entrants to compete/dethrone the incumbents.  Cynicism aside, it will also be a world in which most humans are better off.  Technology is lifting millions of people out of poverty, child mortality rates continue to decrease, fewer people are dying of preventable diseases, per capita GDP continues to rise and billions of people are now coming online, opening the door for an untold number of entrepreneurs to change the world.

Ultimately I believe this will be the defining issues of the next 30 years.  

Almost any time Jeff Bezos speaks he is able to deconstruct complex economic, business and management issues to their core principles, leaving those paying attention with invaluable nuggets of wisdom.  In a recent blog post, Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital referenced  one of Bezos' best pieces of advice. The quote is as follows,

“I very frequently get the question: ‘What’s going to change in the next 10 years?’ And that is a very interesting question; it’s a very common one. I almost never get the question: ‘What’s not going to change in the next 10 years?’ And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two — because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. … [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that’s going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It’s impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, ‘Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,’ [or] ‘I love Amazon; I just wish you’d deliver a little more slowly.’ Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.” 

Invest in things that you know are not going to change in ten years.  I submit that this would be a very useful exercise for politicians to attempt as well.  Like in business, if you know what American's are still going to want 10 years from now you can invest heavily in those areas.  As a qualifier, I would add that the key word in this exercise is "invest," not "spend."

Below in no particular order a brief list of four things that will not change in America over the next 10 years and warrant significant investment. 

American's will want their children to receive and exceptional education.  This one is important for two reasons, 1) A democracy cannot function without a well-educated citizenry 2) As technology continues to eliminate jobs the US is going to need a greater percentage of skilled workers in order to retain its position as the world's strongest and most innovative nation.  This means reevaluating education from the ground up to ensure that all children have access to a world-class education regardless of class, gender, race, etc.  It means making sure that everyone has access to a college education at a reasonable cost and that the nature of education has to evolve with the times.  I would like to see computer science  become compulsory (like learning a new language) and for technology to facilitate a more personalized learning experience for students while making access to high-quality education more readily available.  

American's will still want to feel safe.  A strong national defense is one of the pillars our country was built on, and the government should invest heavily in ensuring that her citizens are protected from all threats, both foreign and domestic.  This means committing a significant amount of time and money to both our traditional armed forces as well as our nation's cyber defenses, which are quickly becoming the premiere battlefield globally.  It will require collaboration between the government and our nation's leading technologists and tech companies to ensure that our continued dominance in the 21st Century.  These parties are going to have to reconcile their differences and come to agreements about what types of policies are in America's best interest.  For the government that means a more transparent and less intrusive domestic surveillance policy and for tech companies and ordinary Americans it means understanding that we all have a reasonable expectation to privacy, not an absolute expectation.  

America will want to attract the world's brightest immigrants.  I think Paul Graham did an outstanding job of explaining why this is so important, but I will summarize here.  Paul argues that because the US only represents about 5% of the world's population it is reasonable to assume that 95% of the world's greatest scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs are born outside the US.  As technology continues to creep into the darkest corners of the world and billions of people come online it is in our best interest to be the place that any young, smart ambitious entrepreneur wants to live.  This is important because 1) Any current technology executive will tell you that there is a severe talent shortage, which is being magnified by an ineffective immigration policy and 2) Because in order for the US to remain a hub for innovation we need to attract as many high-quality thinkers 

American's will want an economy that is growing sustainably. This is one of the trickiest topics to discuss because not only does everyone and their mother have an opinion about  how to achieve sustainable growth, but the nature of work is undergoing a major transformation as software continues to eat the world.  Generally speaking I believe that if you attract the smartest people, create the right incentives and introduce a regulatory framework that makes starting and growing a business as easy as possible you will end up with a positive outcome over the long run.  

I've been really frustrated recently with the state of online news content, specifically the lengths to which news outlets go to in order to get someone to read an article.  The overuse of misleading adjectives like Insane, Amazing, Miserable, Craziest are one of their favorite tactics and one that frustrates me to no end.  It's like a replay of the story of the boy who cried wolf every time I want to see what's going on in the world, and I think any serious journalist should recognize that by constantly creating misleading headlines they are doing their readers and the public at large a huge disservice .  How should a consumer know when a specific article really is a must-read and when it is just an article.  Case in point is this article I came across on Business Insider titled, "The insane ritual Tim Cook goes through every time he visits and Apple Store."

I am an Apple fan and appreciate the work Tim has done at Apple since taking over from Steve Jobs so I figured I would give it a read.  My expectation was that maybe Mr. Cook is known to spent hours in a  random store making sure everything is just so.  That the level of perfection he expects from all Apple Stores at all times is as high as the quality of the products they're selling (which I'm sure it is). Maybe he is known to get on his hands and knees and scrub the floors until they meet his expectations.  Anything that a normal CEO would find beneath them. To my dismay the article's main point was that with the exception of the store manager employees do not know when to expect a visit from Mr. Cook and that (drum roll please) he enters through the back door before talking to employee's.  I don't believe that anyone in their right mind would find the content in this article approaching anywhere near the level of "Insane." 

The question is why do media outlets and journalists feel the need to misrepresent their work to their readers. The easy answer is that there is so much content out there right now it is necessary to be successful, which I can appreciate to a point.  In the long run, I think these types of tactics undermine great journalists and writers everywhere and insult the intelligence of readers.  

I was surprised the first time I read that roughly 98% of employers in the US have fewer than one hundred employees.  It's easy to view the employer landscape in the US as one dominated by large multinational corporations because those are the companies we hear about on the news every day.  Reality is in fact  quite different as most members of America's workforce are employed by SMBs.  From a technology perspective, these companies have traditionally  been underserved but represent a massive opportunity for enterprise companies that understand how to bring technology downmarket.  Most of these companies still rely heavily on paper and manual process to keep their businesses running, and are aggressively looking to partner with vendors who can either eliminate some of their pain points or  at minimum modernize the way their business operates.

I expect to see more of the products and services that have previously only been made available to large cap, Fortune 500 companies do just that in the coming years.  In order to scale down the software is going to have to move towards a more self-service and standardized model.  Small and midsize companies don't have time or resources to pay for custom built heavily serviced software solutions, nor should they have to.    

I'm going out to Colorado with a buddy of mine to do some skiing in February, we just finalized our accommodations and the sharing economy has really come in handy.  Rather than paying a few hundred dollars per night at a hotel we're staying in someone's basement via Airbnb for roughly 40% of the cost.  I have been following Airbnb closely over the past few years and recommended them to friends and family on numerous occasions, but this is my first time using them.  We also decided to try Relay Rides as opposed to Hertz, Enterprise, etc. for our car rental, which if you're not familiar is like Airbnb for cars. Both of these companies have saved us several hundred dollars, but more than that they have changed how I travel altogether.  These idea's would have seemed utterly outrageous five years ago, but this trip was an "ah-ha moment" for me and one which made me realize how much potential those "utterly outrageous" ideas can have.

The quality of our trip is now in the hands of individuals not companies (for the most part).  The variety of options available to us when making our accommodations has increased dramatically and the costs have come down significantly.  Furthermore, the economic value is now going directly to a person as opposed to a company (again for the most part).  If you would have asked me five years ago what would have to take place for the Hilton's and Alamo's of the world to have their business model threatened I would not have had an answer for you.  When you start to estimate how much money companies like Airbnb and Relay Rides are costing incumbents it really makes you appreciate the nature of innovation. 

I think sometimes we all tend to underestimate how much companies like Airbnb and RelayRides are affecting the world around us.  I urge everyone to take a step back every once in a while and appreciate the progress being made right in front of us.  

For the past several years I, like so many others, have wondered why Apple has not come out with an Apple Television.  In his biography, Steve Jobs noted that he finally cracked the TV and knew how to make a better one (I'm paraphrasing).  More recently during an interview with Charlie Rose, Tim Cook let it slip that Apple had at least been experimenting with the idea of coming out with a TV. As a huge fan of Apple that sounds great but when you think of where the future of TV might be heading it's easy to understand why Apple has not come out with one yet. 

An important question to ask is, could the TV end up being the dumb device in our house?  With streaming devices such as Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku, Amazon Fire TV and many more continuing to pop up it's becoming very clear that the content we watch won't actually be coming from our TV's, rather the TV will just be the dumb device who's only purpose is to play the content.  Not only are we seeing a proliferation of streaming devices, but the unbundling of cable services in recent years has the potential drive more people away from traditional offerings.  Unbundling gives the consumer the freedom to watch more content on a variety of devices without having to pay for cable.  With HBO and CBS now allowing you to subscribe to their streaming services and Starz suggesting they will do the same it's clear the cable companies are going to have to rethink their business model at some point in the next 3-5 years.  They simply won't be able to charge consumers an arm and a leg for a bundle of 150 channels when most people are only concerned about 10% of them.  

If that does end up being the case then Apple choosing not to develop their own TV makes more sense. Another big issue to consider is that TV's offers a much less attractive business opportunity.  Most iPhone users upgrade to new devices every year or two, but that's not the case with TVs where we might have the same TV for up to five years.    In short that means less money in Apple pocket.  It's a problem they are already facing with the iPad and one which they would probably like to avoid in the future.

I read an article last week that discussed how the Chinese Communist Party believes it has a responsibility to oversee and control education at the university level (a moral imperative).  It is another step in the wrong direction for a country who citizens are clearly looking for a more democratic government and greater protections of their free speech.  It's controls like this and others that will continue to make it very difficult for Chinese citizens to live up to their innovative potential, as they faced continued resistance from their government, including:

• Making it more difficult to access Gmail
• Tighter control of University education
• Banning the use of puns in the media 
• The list of more than 2,700 banned websites
• The Hong Kong protests 
• Continuing to jail dissidents

The story of Chinese growth over the past twenty years is one of the most astonishing economic triumphs in human history.  In a very short period of time, China has established itself as one of the world's greatest economies, creating hundreds of billions of dollars in new economic value and introducing nearly 700 million of its citizens to the internet.  Those citizens are now spending billion of dollars every year on goods and services and have the leverage to move China to a modern consumption based economy.

As China continues to integrate itself into the global economy and as the explosion of the Chinese consumer continues it is going to be increasingly difficult for the Communist Party to reconcile these trends with their ideologies of ever-tightening government control.  Furthermore, as technology makes it way deeper into China and millions of new users gain access to the internet I suspect the government will find itself between a rock and a hard place.  Every step taken to further integrate itself globally will make it harder for the Chinese government to hide their policies restricting the rights of the citizens of a "free country".  Furthermore, as their role in the world grows they will simultaneously be inviting more criticism of those same policies.  The growth that they are so eager to sustain comes with expectations from other developed nations that their citizens have access to similar basic rights of any other free nation.  

-With all that said I still expect to see China produce some of the most innovative companies of the 21st century, just don't expect them to gain control of the title "Most innovative country in the world" anytime soon.

-I'm also excited to see how technology is leveraged by the Chinese to force change on their government.

Investment is the healthcare space has been a hotly debated topic for some time now.  Most people agree that the opportunities are huge, but many VCs and CEO's disagree on the prospects of success.  The regulatory environment in healthcare is so convoluted it has scared more than a few investors away.  Even Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, has said that it is such a difficult space to work in he would prefer to spend him time and money elsewhere.  

What my experience at Employee Navigator is teaching me is that healthcare is undoubtedly one of the most difficult industries to innovate in (financial services would be up there too) but there are huge gains to be made by companies who are willing to put in the time necessary to have a real impact.  In our experience that literally means dragging every insurance carrier we speak with until they understand what we're doing.  We're going to keep explaining to them why we're right until they agree with us.  

The opportunities to make a quick buck in healthcare are few and far between, my hope is that the slow moving environment does not scare away outside capital.  

For the past year, everyone in our office has been trying to solve a difficult, but important problem our business is facing.  How do we educate and engage with our clients so that they are armed with the tools and understanding necessary to use our software effectively with their clients?  Catchy phrases like engagement and customer success were tossed around, we have simplified the software and adjusted our on-boarding process.  Nothing was working.

One of our engineers was listening to our problem at lunch and said that we should treat our clients like a franchise, much like opening up a McDonald's or Subway.  Everybody at the table went silent for a few seconds, then we realized that was the perfect way to frame our problem.  When someone opens up a McDonald's they are given exactly what they need to run a successful operation.  Everything from what vendors they work with and how to cook the food to how to talk to customers and take orders. I'm sure the exact level of detail McDonald's goes into to ensure a consistent experience for all customers around the world is astounding, but you get the point.  And while the franchisee is given all of the tools needed to run a successful operation the new owner still has to hire the right people, treat their customers fairly and execute a business strategy.  The stores are given a recipe for success, but some follow it better than others.  What's beautiful about the franchise model is that it is also very repeatable and we love repeatable.  

We have to go into the same amount of detail, educating our clients and giving them the resources necessary for them to succeed.  Unfortunately, our industry is incredibly complex there is no looking for a silver bullet is a waste of time.  We have to go well beyond the traditional support and training that we are accustomed to providing.  Ultimately we're going to have to teach them how to train their clients on the software, what to say, who to work with, etc.  If done successfully then we will not only have solved our initial set of problems but will have also created a small army of evangelists who are able to speak to the strengths of our software like they were one of our employees.  And just like MsDonalds some of our clients will execute better than others, leading to a better experience for their clients.

For me, this was also a case study in collaboration.  It was not the sales or support team who framed the problem correctly, it was an engineer who looked at it from a different perspective.

For the most part, I have stopped listening to "experts " dissect, predict and analyze the day to day movements of the public markets.  There is not much value in listening to someone try to predict the unpredictable.  I have begun looking at the economy as an elevator, either ascending or descending, improving or declining, while the day to day movements of the markets are like a yo-yo you're playing with while the elevator is moving.  I don't really care whether the yo-yo is going up or down on a given day, it is immaterial to the direction of the elevator.  As long as the elevator is moving up at a comfortable pace and the cables are not at risk of snapping we should rest assured that all is well (for now).

JP Morgan was once asked by a fellow executive what he thought markets would do in the coming months, his response, "It will fluctuate."  Warren Buffett has echoed a similar sentiment throughout his career and I think the world would be wiser if we took their advice to heart.

I saw this GIF recently and thought it was one of the most compelling visuals for why we need innovation in the auto industry.  With the global population expected to grow to over 8 billion people by 2030 and urbanization around the world packing more and more people onto our city streets we're going to need to see some drastic innovation in this sector in the coming years.  Like any other complex global problem there is no silver bullet but there are a number of options that could help create a much more sustainable urban model for coming generations.  

Government's at all levels are going to have top reinvest in public transportation infrastructure but they are also going to have to make it an enjoyable experience if they want to achieve mass adoption.  They should leverage technology to make people want to use public transportation, not use it as a last resort.

Uber, Lyft and other rise sharing services are also well positioned to help solve this problem.  More specifically, services like Uber Pool and Driver Destination have the potential to have a tremendous impact on urban congestion.  While these services continue to face intense scrutiny I expect they will become the norm for my generation as more people become comfortable with the sharing economy.  

I was in a meeting today and one of our employees got frustrated because the screen on his iPhone had frozen, forcing him to shut down his app and reopen it.  In about 30 seconds he was back to where he needed to be, harmless enough.  If you had seen his reaction though you might have thought that Apple had deliberately planned on ruining his entire day.  I found the incident amusing but also began to reflect on how high are expectations are for technology these days.

The iPhone (or any smart phone) is a globally connected supercomputer that fits in our pocket and allows us to to communicate with anyone around the world instantly, for free.  Pretty powerful stuff.  It amazing if you step back and think about how far we've come in the last decade.  So many of us, myself included, forget how lucky we are to be living in a world where we have access to any bit of information we could possibly want at out fingertips at all times. All tech companies should also recognize how high consumer's expectations are and make sure that their product is able to meet or surpass them, or risk being beat by someone who can deliver an almost perfect user experience.   

Protecting the consumer is quickly becoming one of the most frustrating statements I hear on a regular basis.  Uttered by various  regulatory bodies in response to new and innovative companies, it is a popular way for them to portray new companies like Airbnb, Uber or Zenefits and Tesla (as they relate to car dealers) as a threat to the general public as opposed to a threat to their way of life.  It is usually follow by something like, "We welcome innovation but only if it occurs within the existing legal framework everyone else operates within."  These bodies need to understand that that is not how innovation occurs and that if they truly cared about the consumer they would work with new players to help their industries progress and evolve.  To be against this type of innovation is actually to work against the consumer and their interest, because the technology would not exist if it was not being used/bought by people who previously had access to nothing of the sort.

Social Media is one of the most powerful inventions in recent memory, having given billions of people access to instant global communication for free.  It has given voices to people who until now would have gone unnoticed by anyone outside of their direct social circle.  With that said social media has quite a bit of work to do to make it a more reliable and productive asset to society.  

The biggest issue I'd like to see resolved  is the technology's tendency to perpetuate false or misleading information.  We are inundated with breaking news so frequently that we do not wait for those pesky things called facts before drawing a conclusion anymore.  Twitter's ability to relay information to a global audience in a matter of seconds is amazing and great for so many reasons.  Like all great power though it's propensity for good can also be used just as unproductively.  In some cases it has tipped  public opinion regarding an event or person, presuming them guilty until proven innocent.  In this respect that social media has the potential to seriously detract from a well functioning democracy.  Because of this issue I have serious concerns about citizen journalists, who are all most likely working off of second hand information and partial facts.  The upside to this issue is that I, and I suspect others, have begun to appreciate investigative journalism for the first time.   

I'm not sure if the solution to this problem will be technical or societal.  That is, either someone will create a company that's goal is to solve this problem, or society as a whole will reach a tipping point and begin to treat the quality of content we find on Twitter/Facebook/etc. differently.  

There has been a lot of talk about a bubble in tech over the past two years, and it's gotten a little louder in the last six months.  While I'm not convinced we're in a bubble it does seem like we're in the 7th inning and I would expect to see some pretty big vaporization's in the next two years.  While nobody wants to be a part of a failure they are obviously inevitable and a healthy part of any market.  

With that said it's almost a little refreshing to see two very hot start-ups who had both reached billion or close to a billion dollar valuations closing their doors.  Aereo recently filed for Chapter 11 and rumors are the Fab is in talks to be acquired for somewhere around $15 million (they we're valued at $1 billion not too long ago).  I do not think this is a sign of impending doom in the technology sector but rather a natural outcome that we should expect to see in any free market.  While news of both companies demise had been reported for several months it is interesting that everything is crystallizing in the same week. 

JetBlue caught a lot of flack today for announcing that they are adding checked bag fees and less legroom for passengers.  This was done in response to Wall Street analysts who had been hounding them for the past year or two to maximize profits.  The issue reached a tipping point when their CEO, David Barger, was fired.  Barger was said to have spent to much time trying to preserve the brand values that made JetBlue a big success a decade ago. 

Phrased differently, JetBlue fired their CEO because he was trying to maintain the great customer experience that brought them success in the first place, relative to the rest of the airline industry which generally treats passengers like dirt..  

It's situations like these when I can understand why so many tech companies are hesitant to go public.  All of a sudden you have thousands of people telling you how to run your business, a majority of who probably don't even use your product or service.  And for companies that are already fighting intense regulatory battles around the world like AirBnb and Uber I understand why they would raise huge rounds in the private market at massive valuations.  While it is important for theses companies to realize that going public is the next step in the process of building a great long lasting company its also important to make sure they have tons of safeguards in place to make sure they don't lose whatever secret ingredients made them great in the first place.    

I was having a discussion with my roommates last night about the minimum wage.  During the course of our conversation I realized I was having a difficult time articulating my argument, as were my roommates.  Everyone involved is college-educated and relatively well informed, but it became very clear that we had taken a stance without a thorough understanding of our position.  I suspect that is the case for most Americans who take policy stances based strictly on part affiliation.  Minimum wage increases are either terrible for business or a moral imperative as a society, with little room for any middle ground.  

I've said it before, but this is where I think writing is so powerful.  It's an excellent medium for developing a point of view and teaching yourself how to form a position on a subject.  I tend to be more reserved when it comes to minimum wage increases, here is why...

• As technology continues to act as a substitute for human labor it will become more cost effective for businesses to automate jobs rather than employer humans.  A simple example would be cashiers at fast food restaurants, grocery stores, etc.  These are occupations that seem very likely candidates for automation.  If we wants companies like Wendy's or Safeway to continue to staff people in these positions we have to make it economically feasible for them to do so, and raising the minimum wage for these low skill jobs actually creates more incentive to automate.  While it might be politically unpopular/impossible I could see a time when we have to abolish the minimum wage in some cases in order to allow humans to compete with computers.
• People earning the minimum wage represent a fairly small percentage of total US workers, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3%.  Of that 3% more than half are between the ages of 16-24.  This suggests that these workers are most likely employed for the first time and have very few marketable skills and are also not the sole breadwinners of their households.  These are also workers who are most likely part-time workers and are currently attending school.  It is the same people who earn minimum wage today who will earn well-above minimum wage down the road as they increase their earning power.     
• One of the most common arguments for increasing the minimum wage is that there are a large percentage of single parents  who earn minimum wage.  In fact, only 4% of minimum-wage workers are single parents working full time.  Furthermore, the average family income of a minimum wage worker is $53,000, well above the poverty line.
• Most studies suggest that when there is an increase in the minimum wage there is also a decrease in low skilled jobs.  

As I'm writing this its clear that someone on either side of the debate could come out with a laundry list of statistics and studies supporting their stance, which I have no interest in doing.  A fundamental question we're all going to have to answer though is how will technology affect employment?  I believe that a significant percentage of low skilled jobs will be automated in the coming decades.  If you accept that premise then the question becomes how do we ensure there are enough jobs to go around?  It's not logical to argue that making human labor more expensive is the smart move when technology tends to drive costs down exponentially over time.  

There are a number of tools and programs that can be used to combat this trend, I just don't believe raising the minimum wage is the right one over the long term.  The debate ultimately needs to be reframed from "what is fair" to "what is practical in the long run if technology will continue to disrupt traditional forms of employment."

There seems to be a little less excitement surrounding bitcoin over the past few months.  The price has been steadily declining since it hit it's peak in November 2013 of $1,145 and transaction volume, which I believe is an incredibly important metric, has been relatively flat over the past few months.  Furthermore there seems to be a lot less discussion in the general press about bitcoin.  Although I can't quantify that metric the marked drop in bitcoin press and open debate is a little troubling.  

I believe that bitcoin is missing the major use case that drives it to the mainstream.  Paypal was able revolutionize online payments, but only after they found a very specific use case.  It was not until they began to focus specifically on eBay that they were able to recognize the growth they were looking for.  Bitcoin faces a similar problem in that it is so unfamiliar to most people that in order to drive mass adoption they need to address a specific problem.  The most logical place to me is international remittances.  In 2012 there was over $123 billion in remittances sent form the United states to other countries alone.  The global market for these types of money transfers is absolutely massive and also suffers from a couple major problems, which bitcoin is uniquely positioned to address.  

First is that fact that most citizens in Third World countries do not have access to modern banking, making international money transfers difficult.  With the number of smartphones expected to be close to 6 billion by 2020, transferring bitcoin would be much easier than than hard currency. 

Second is that fact that the average fee imposed on international remittances is roughly 8.5% but can often be as high as 25%.  Even on the low end that is a huge chunk of money that is taken away from some of the poorest people in the world.  Again bitcoin is a perfect solution to this problem because the cost to transfer it is close to 0%.  While this problem may not touch close to home in the lives of most bitcoin enthusiasts it is certainly a big problem globally.  The 8-25% could be the difference between a family in the slums of Mumbai eating for a week or not.  

International remittances represents a way for technology to truly change the lives of billions of the poorest people on earth.  And although its faces a tough uphill battle I wold love to see more people get behind this specific cause.  

President Obama came out yesterday and voiced his strong support for net neutrality.  I will be the first to admit that I do not agree with a lot of his policies, however I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of net neutrality if America want's to remain the most innovative country on earth.  Net neutrality has been on of the fundamental building blocks that has enabled American entrepreneur's to build innovative companies at an astonishing rate, improving the lives of billions of people around the world..

Everybody deserves to be treated the same, which is the way the internet has always operated, net neutrality is just embracing the way it has always been.  To give the large telecoms the ability to prioritize or degrade certain internet services would threaten the internet as we know it.  At the end of the day let's focus on protecting consumers, not corporations.

America ranks 26th in download speeds globally, roughly 1/3 as fast as Hong Kong.  The telcos continue to argue that they cannot afford to invest in their networks and yet Verizon and AT&T have over $20bn in net after tax income cash and Comcast is somewhere in the neighborhood of $7bn.  Maybe if they were investing in their networks so we can have the 100Mbps that people in Hong Kong get, I’d be a little more sympathetic to their argument (Thanks, Fred Wilson).