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USV's original investment thesis was heavily influenced by economist Carlota Perez whose research detailed the life cycle of new technologies as they enter and penetrate society. Perez found that fundamental new technologies -- the kinds that radically re-shape the economy and society -- tend to follow a common pattern, which she breaks into two phases: installation and deployment. The installation phase is characterized by wild exuberance and exponential growth, as a new technology breaks onto the scene and the early leaders take hold. The deployment phase, which typically occurs after some sort of blow-up (in the market or in law/regulation/society), sees the technology penetrate all corners of society, slowly but surely re-shaping norms, laws, customs, regulations, etc. Looking at the last ~40 years of computing and the internet (26 years now since the birth of the WWW), we can see this cycle play out, perhaps with the dot-com bomb of 2000 marking the inflection point:
Looking at the shapes of the curves during these two respective phases, you'll notice that the farther we get into the deployment phase, the more the rate of growth flattens out, as the technology is better understood and therefore de-risked. Perhaps the specific dates shown here are right, or perhaps not -- you could argue that the "deployment phase" really didn't take hold until mobile was firmly in place (2008 ish), but the point is really just that: at this point, the overall operating model of web+mobile is understood, and the world is well along in adopting it and applying it to all things. Another way of saying that is that now, in the deployment phase of the web+mobile era, the incumbent industries from the previous era (the industrial era) are all facing intense competition and are under threat of being re-shaped in the web+mobile model:
At the same time, however, we're seeing the other end of the cycle begin to play out: we now have "new incumbents" representing the web+ mobile model. This is Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook (from the first big wave of desktop applications), and now Uber, Airbnb, Instagram etc (from the second wave of mobile applications). Now that these new incumbents have staked out their territory, we're in the middle of the traditional cycle of technology power wars as big platforms duke it out, and new insurgents try to poke holes in their grip:
I'm not prepared to say that today's "new insurgents" (essentially blockchain companies and others that are challenging incumbents on data control practices) necessarily represent the next great surge, but there is undoubtedly a serious amount of activity that's focused on disrupting the "traditional" web+mobile model, as opposed to further deploying it farther into society/industry. So to summarize, the two big forces we're focused on at the moment are the deployment of the web+mobile model, reshaping the communications architecture of every industry, and the disruption of the web and mobile model, challenging the new incumbents based on their data architecture:
Today at USV, we are hosting our 4th semiannual Trust, Safety and Security Summit. Brittany, who manages the USV portfolio network, runs about 60 events per year -- each one a peer-driven, peer-learning experience, like a mini-unconference on topics like engineering, people, design, etc. The USV network is really incredible and the summits are a big part of it. I always attend the Trust, Safety and Security summits as part of my policy-focused work. Pretty much every network we are investors in has a "trust and safety" team which deals with issues ranging from content policies (spam, harassment, etc) to physical safety (on networks with a real-world component), to dealing with law enforcement. We also include security here (data security, physical security) here -- often managed by a different team but with many overlapping issues as T&S. What's amazing to witness when working with Trust, Safety and Security teams is that they are rapidly innovating on policy. We've long described web services as akin to governments, and it's within this area where this is most apparent. Each community is developing its own practices and norms and rapidly iterating on the design of its policies based on lots and lots and lots of real-time data. What's notable is that across the wide variety in platforms (from messaging apps like Kik, to marketplaces like Etsy and Kickstarter, to real-world networks like Kitchensurfing and Sidecar, to security services like Cloudflare and Sift Science), the common element in terms of policy is the ability to handle the onboarding of millions of new years per day thanks to data-driven, peer-produced policy devices -- which you could largely classify as "reputation systems". Note that this approach works for "centralized" networks like the ones listed above, as well as for decentralized systems (like email and bitcoin) and that governing in decentralized systems has its own set of challenges. This is a fundamentally different regulatory model than what we have in the real world. On the internet, the model is "go ahead and do -- but we'll track it and your reputation will be affected if you're a bad actor", whereas with real-world government, the model is more "get our permission first, then go do". I've described this before as "regulation 1.0" vs. "regulation 2.0":
I recently wrote a white paper for the Data-Smart City Solutions program at the Harvard Kennedy School on this topic, which I have neglected to blog about here so far. It's quite long, but the above is basically the TL;DR version. I mention it today because we continue to be faced with the challenge of applying regulation 1.0 models to a regulation 2.0 world. Here are two examples: First, the NYC Taxi and Limousine commission's recently proposed rules for regulating on-demand ride applications. At least two aspects of the proposed rules are really problematic:
TLC wants to require their sign off on any new on-demand ride apps, including all updates to existing apps.
TLC will limit any driver to having only one active device in their car
On #1: apps ship updates nearly every day. Imagine adding a layer of regulatory approval to that step. And imagine that that approval needs to come from a government agency without deep expertise in application development. It's bad enough that developers need Apple's approval to ship iOS apps -- we simply cannot allow for this kind of friction when bringing products to market. On #2: the last thing we want to do is introduce artificial scarcity into the system. The beauty of regulation 2.0 is that we can welcome new entrants, welcome innovations, and welcome competition. We don't need to impose barriers and limits. And we certainly don't want new regulations to entrench incumbents (whether that's the existing taxi/livery system or new incumbents like Uber) Second, the NYS Dept of Financial Services this week released their final BitLicense, which will regulate bitcoin service providers. Coin Center has a detailed response to the BitLicense framework, which points out the following major flaws:
Anti money laundering requirements are improved but vague.
A requirement that new products be pre-approved by the NYDFS superintendent.
Custody or control of consumer funds is not defined in a way that takes full account of the technology’s capabilities.
Language which could prevent businesses from lawfully protecting customers from publicly revealing their transaction histories.
The lack of a defined onramp for startups.
Without getting to all the details, I'll note two big ones, which are DFS preapproval for all app updates (same as with TLC) and the "lack of a defined on-ramp for startups". This idea of an "on-ramp" is critical, and is the key thing that all the web platforms referenced at the top of this post get right, and is the core idea behind regulation 2.0. Because we collect so much data in real-time, we can vastly open up the "on-ramps" whether those are for new customers/users (in the case of web platforms) or for new startups (in the case of government regulations). The challenge, here, is that we ultimately need to decide to make a pretty profound trade: trading up-front, permission-based systems, for open systems made accountable through data.
The challenge here is exacerbated by the fact that it will be resisted on both sides: governments will not want to relinquish the ability to grant permissions, and platforms will not want to relinquish data. So perhaps we will remain at a standoff, or perhaps we can find an opportunity to consciously make that trade -- dropping permission requirements in exchange for opening up more data. This is the core idea behind my Regulation 2.0 white paper, and I suspect we'll see the opportunity to do this play out again and again in the coming months and years.
USV's original investment thesis was heavily influenced by economist Carlota Perez whose research detailed the life cycle of new technologies as they enter and penetrate society. Perez found that fundamental new technologies -- the kinds that radically re-shape the economy and society -- tend to follow a common pattern, which she breaks into two phases: installation and deployment. The installation phase is characterized by wild exuberance and exponential growth, as a new technology breaks onto the scene and the early leaders take hold. The deployment phase, which typically occurs after some sort of blow-up (in the market or in law/regulation/society), sees the technology penetrate all corners of society, slowly but surely re-shaping norms, laws, customs, regulations, etc. Looking at the last ~40 years of computing and the internet (26 years now since the birth of the WWW), we can see this cycle play out, perhaps with the dot-com bomb of 2000 marking the inflection point:
Looking at the shapes of the curves during these two respective phases, you'll notice that the farther we get into the deployment phase, the more the rate of growth flattens out, as the technology is better understood and therefore de-risked. Perhaps the specific dates shown here are right, or perhaps not -- you could argue that the "deployment phase" really didn't take hold until mobile was firmly in place (2008 ish), but the point is really just that: at this point, the overall operating model of web+mobile is understood, and the world is well along in adopting it and applying it to all things. Another way of saying that is that now, in the deployment phase of the web+mobile era, the incumbent industries from the previous era (the industrial era) are all facing intense competition and are under threat of being re-shaped in the web+mobile model:
At the same time, however, we're seeing the other end of the cycle begin to play out: we now have "new incumbents" representing the web+ mobile model. This is Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook (from the first big wave of desktop applications), and now Uber, Airbnb, Instagram etc (from the second wave of mobile applications). Now that these new incumbents have staked out their territory, we're in the middle of the traditional cycle of technology power wars as big platforms duke it out, and new insurgents try to poke holes in their grip:
I'm not prepared to say that today's "new insurgents" (essentially blockchain companies and others that are challenging incumbents on data control practices) necessarily represent the next great surge, but there is undoubtedly a serious amount of activity that's focused on disrupting the "traditional" web+mobile model, as opposed to further deploying it farther into society/industry. So to summarize, the two big forces we're focused on at the moment are the deployment of the web+mobile model, reshaping the communications architecture of every industry, and the disruption of the web and mobile model, challenging the new incumbents based on their data architecture:
Today at USV, we are hosting our 4th semiannual Trust, Safety and Security Summit. Brittany, who manages the USV portfolio network, runs about 60 events per year -- each one a peer-driven, peer-learning experience, like a mini-unconference on topics like engineering, people, design, etc. The USV network is really incredible and the summits are a big part of it. I always attend the Trust, Safety and Security summits as part of my policy-focused work. Pretty much every network we are investors in has a "trust and safety" team which deals with issues ranging from content policies (spam, harassment, etc) to physical safety (on networks with a real-world component), to dealing with law enforcement. We also include security here (data security, physical security) here -- often managed by a different team but with many overlapping issues as T&S. What's amazing to witness when working with Trust, Safety and Security teams is that they are rapidly innovating on policy. We've long described web services as akin to governments, and it's within this area where this is most apparent. Each community is developing its own practices and norms and rapidly iterating on the design of its policies based on lots and lots and lots of real-time data. What's notable is that across the wide variety in platforms (from messaging apps like Kik, to marketplaces like Etsy and Kickstarter, to real-world networks like Kitchensurfing and Sidecar, to security services like Cloudflare and Sift Science), the common element in terms of policy is the ability to handle the onboarding of millions of new years per day thanks to data-driven, peer-produced policy devices -- which you could largely classify as "reputation systems". Note that this approach works for "centralized" networks like the ones listed above, as well as for decentralized systems (like email and bitcoin) and that governing in decentralized systems has its own set of challenges. This is a fundamentally different regulatory model than what we have in the real world. On the internet, the model is "go ahead and do -- but we'll track it and your reputation will be affected if you're a bad actor", whereas with real-world government, the model is more "get our permission first, then go do". I've described this before as "regulation 1.0" vs. "regulation 2.0":
I recently wrote a white paper for the Data-Smart City Solutions program at the Harvard Kennedy School on this topic, which I have neglected to blog about here so far. It's quite long, but the above is basically the TL;DR version. I mention it today because we continue to be faced with the challenge of applying regulation 1.0 models to a regulation 2.0 world. Here are two examples: First, the NYC Taxi and Limousine commission's recently proposed rules for regulating on-demand ride applications. At least two aspects of the proposed rules are really problematic:
TLC wants to require their sign off on any new on-demand ride apps, including all updates to existing apps.
TLC will limit any driver to having only one active device in their car
On #1: apps ship updates nearly every day. Imagine adding a layer of regulatory approval to that step. And imagine that that approval needs to come from a government agency without deep expertise in application development. It's bad enough that developers need Apple's approval to ship iOS apps -- we simply cannot allow for this kind of friction when bringing products to market. On #2: the last thing we want to do is introduce artificial scarcity into the system. The beauty of regulation 2.0 is that we can welcome new entrants, welcome innovations, and welcome competition. We don't need to impose barriers and limits. And we certainly don't want new regulations to entrench incumbents (whether that's the existing taxi/livery system or new incumbents like Uber) Second, the NYS Dept of Financial Services this week released their final BitLicense, which will regulate bitcoin service providers. Coin Center has a detailed response to the BitLicense framework, which points out the following major flaws:
Anti money laundering requirements are improved but vague.
A requirement that new products be pre-approved by the NYDFS superintendent.
Custody or control of consumer funds is not defined in a way that takes full account of the technology’s capabilities.
Language which could prevent businesses from lawfully protecting customers from publicly revealing their transaction histories.
The lack of a defined onramp for startups.
Without getting to all the details, I'll note two big ones, which are DFS preapproval for all app updates (same as with TLC) and the "lack of a defined on-ramp for startups". This idea of an "on-ramp" is critical, and is the key thing that all the web platforms referenced at the top of this post get right, and is the core idea behind regulation 2.0. Because we collect so much data in real-time, we can vastly open up the "on-ramps" whether those are for new customers/users (in the case of web platforms) or for new startups (in the case of government regulations). The challenge, here, is that we ultimately need to decide to make a pretty profound trade: trading up-front, permission-based systems, for open systems made accountable through data.
The challenge here is exacerbated by the fact that it will be resisted on both sides: governments will not want to relinquish the ability to grant permissions, and platforms will not want to relinquish data. So perhaps we will remain at a standoff, or perhaps we can find an opportunity to consciously make that trade -- dropping permission requirements in exchange for opening up more data. This is the core idea behind my Regulation 2.0 white paper, and I suspect we'll see the opportunity to do this play out again and again in the coming months and years.
The title "venture capital vs community capital" is an intentionally provocative strawman. The point I want to make is that of course there is a natural tension here, but it's not a brand new dynamic, an either/or choice, or a zero-sum game. Rather, it's part of a recurring pattern that we can see dating back decades (if not much longer) in the history of technology. Viewed this historical lens, we can see the patterns of this cycle and use them to help us understand where the viable opportunities will be in this phase.
But first, I want to point out that the reason we're all here is that we believe in the power of networks -- of the connected society -- to expand knowledge, deliver economic opportunity and solve big problems (energy, health, education, etc) in ways that haven't been possible previously. Right before my talk at OuiShareFest, Robin Chase went on and made a compelling plea for us to come up networked, scalable solutions (both venture-backed and community-backed) to the biggest issues facing the planet today, her biggest one being climate change. I am a firm believer that this model will continue to have profound, deep impacts on how we live, how we work, how we learn, and what we make, and that we are still in the very early stages. But, as we become more and more familiar with this model, we're starting to pay more attention to the particular architecture of these networks, and the power dynamics built into them.
So, the problem that many in this space have identified is a growing concern about the imbalance of power between peer economy platforms and the participants they support, especially as the most mature platforms (Airbnb and Uber being the elephants in the room, but there will be many more) grow to be very large, wealthy and powerful companies. The problem is essentially one of trust. And specifically in the case of peer economy platforms and workers, it's about economics and control. One way to think about this is that as this space has matured, platforms have a tendency to "thicken" -- to do more, take more, and exert more control. So the question becomes, are participants here getting a fair deal, and do they have an appropriate amount of freedom and control? There is a growing sense that they may not be, and that alternative architectures need to be investigated. While this may feel scary to many observers of the space, especially those coming at this from a public interest perspective, we shouldn't be surprised to see this happen. Rather, this is what always happens as companies explore new spaces and establish profitable business models. So rather than look at this phenomenon simply as a brand new problem to be solved today, it's more useful to see it as yet another phase in a recurring cycle, that presents both known challenges and known opportunities. Looking back at the history of major tech platforms over the past 30 or so years, we can see this cycle turn (note: this is not intended to be exhaustive or complete):
(Note: the green boxes are companies, and the blue bubbles are "open" technologies like free software and open protocols -- i.e., venture capital and community capital, respectively) IBM and AT&T once had a monopoly on the PC and the telephone network, respectively, which was opened up by the PC clones and the modem going over-the-top of the telephone network (not to mention the government break-up of AT&T). Next, Microsoft had a lock on PC software through Windows and Office, and AOL (along w Prodigy, Compuserve, etc) had the online market locked down. This lasted until the proliferation of Linux and IP protocol stack, which poked a hole in Microsoft's desktop OS as well as AOL's walled garden, giving us the open internet. Then, on top of that newly open platform, today's leaders in web (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, etc) and mobile (Apple, Google, Xaomi) built their businesses. It's worth noting that, with the exception of Android, there hasn't been a really meaningful hole poked in the business positions staked out by this generation of companies (though there have been attempts, such as Diaspora for Facebook and Pump.io for Twitter) Finally, we're left with today's peer/sharing/collaborative economy marketplace platforms. These are the new, venture-backed companies staking out territory and building what will become the next generation of powerful incumbents. And while we have seen the beginnings of open protocols that directly challenge their power (like the La'Zooz ridesharing protocol), it's all very very early. So there's the pattern: tech companies build dominant market positions, then open technologies emerge which erode the the tech companies' lock on power (this is sometimes an organized rebellion against this corporate power, and is sometime more of a happy accident). These open technologies then in turn become the platform upon which the next generation of venture-backed companies is built. And so on and so on; rinse and repeat. So, all that is to say: this is not a new thing. And that seeing this as part of a pattern can help us understand what to make of it, and where the next opportunities could emerge.
Given this moment in the cycle -- where we have a small number of large and powerful platforms in some sectors, and a growing sense of discomfort about that power -- how might people who affect change go about doing it? In this section, I want to really stress the "how do you get there part" more than the "what might an alternative architecture look like" part. It's quite easy to imagine a "driver-owned uber" (as many people here have suggested) in its fully realized form, but it's much more difficult to think about how such a thing might come into being. The history of technology is strewn with failed attempts to replace closed/proprietary systems with open ones. Here, I'll point out four ideas that may be helpful in thinking about this:
“Convenience trumps just about everything” -- Steve O'Grady, analyst at Red Monk (link)
Today at OuiShareFest, Aral Balkan from Ind.ie talked about a major failure of the open source movement over the past several decades: to sacrifice short-term usability and experience for long-term (and abstract to most people) freedoms. He framed this problem as "respect for experience" and "respect for utility" (or something along those lines) as the two partner values along with respect for human rights. I would agree with that, and anyone following this space can note the failure of past attempts at open platforms that just weren't usable enough (for example: openID).
"The Lindy Effect is real. Disruption is rare. But it does exist and it is caused by non-linear changes in technology." -- Albert Wenger, USV (link)
My colleague Albert discusses the Lindy Effect: the idea that every day that a platform idea exists extends its expected overall lifespan. In other words, technologies and ideas have momentum -- the longer they're around the longer they'll stay around. It is possible to "disrupt" them, but that requires a profound, non-linear technology change. And even then, they don't just disappear overnight. For example, Microsoft has endured two decades of disruption from the web -- first against Windows as the dominant OS, and then against Office as the dominant productivity suite -- but it still alive and kicking. So the disruption that challenged Microsoft didn't put them out of business, but it did open up the market for many many many others to enter. Looking at today, Uber clearly isn't going anywhere, though "open" challenges to them could open up the market for others. To my mind the non-linear change in technology that has the greatest potential to challenge today's incumbent platforms is the Blockchain (and related decentralized technologies) that are in the process of externalizing data from web and mobile applications (more on that below).
"Your margin is my opportunity" -- Jeff Bezos
This profound idea is not new to the business world, but it's nevertheless instructive for new technologies looking to compete against the new incumbents. Along the lines of "convenience trumps everything", cost matters. For example, I met a blockchain entrepreneur/hacker recently who was incensed about the margin that Etsy takes on transactions (and to most people Etsy is about as fuzzy bunny as you can get as a large web platform).
"The first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block" -- Satoshi Nakamoto (link)
This is a line from the original Bitcoin white paper, and I include it to point out the importance of powerful incentives in deploying open technologies. There are two primary innovations in Bitcoin: 1) the distributed, open ledger; and 2) the financial incentive that drives participating computers to cooperate: mining bitcoins. To the extent that this incentive-to-cooperate model can be extended in other directions, we may be on to something big.
Given all of the above, here are a few things we're looking for at USV: Collaborative platforms in greenfield sectors To the first point about the value of networks (to society), there are many many important sectors still operating under inefficient bureaucratic hierarchical models, which are ripe to be re-architected in a network model (I'm thinking energy, health, education, and many others). I suspect that these sectors will be developed by "traditional" networks (e.g., venture-backed, centralized networks), as these have the ability to move the most quickly, to experiment with new models (failing often), and to help train sectors/cultures that a networked model is possible. Worker support services A major concern with the emerging power of web platforms (especially in the collaborative/sharing space) is worker power. We are already beginning to see platforms emerge to serve workers in this environment (e.g., SherpaShare, Coworker, Peers, the venerable Freelancers Union, etc) and will see many many more here. My belief is that "union 2.0" will be a platform, more than an organization, and its power will derive from the data leverage it's able to attain over the the platforms that employ its workers. Thin platforms One way to challenge "thick" platforms is to build "thin" platforms that do less, take less, and exert less control. We have invested in several of these (DuckDuckGo, compared to Google, Twitter, compared to Facebook, Sidecar compared to Lyft, etc) and are looking for more. Often times, "thin" also means decentralized in some way, pushing power, economics and control further out to the edge. New protocols Finally, new protocols that radically re-architect power, information and control. Inspired by Bitcoin and the blockchain, there is now tremendous energy in this space. It's early early days, but it does feel like this has the potential to become the next "open layer" that washes over the latest generation of big companies (see the diagram above) and cracks open the market even further. At USV, we've made several small investments in this space (OneName, and two that are not yet announced), and are looking for more. It's not clear yet where value will accumulate at this layer, and much of it may and should remain as "community capital" in the system. In conclusion: we are at a really interesting time with the maturity of the large web and mobile platforms, the rapid expansion of peer/sharing/collaborative platforms, and the emergence of distributed protocols. All of this has raised really interesting questions about innovation, global problem-solving, economics and control, and the discussion here will undoubtedly lead to short- and long-term impacts on how and what we build.
The title "venture capital vs community capital" is an intentionally provocative strawman. The point I want to make is that of course there is a natural tension here, but it's not a brand new dynamic, an either/or choice, or a zero-sum game. Rather, it's part of a recurring pattern that we can see dating back decades (if not much longer) in the history of technology. Viewed this historical lens, we can see the patterns of this cycle and use them to help us understand where the viable opportunities will be in this phase.
But first, I want to point out that the reason we're all here is that we believe in the power of networks -- of the connected society -- to expand knowledge, deliver economic opportunity and solve big problems (energy, health, education, etc) in ways that haven't been possible previously. Right before my talk at OuiShareFest, Robin Chase went on and made a compelling plea for us to come up networked, scalable solutions (both venture-backed and community-backed) to the biggest issues facing the planet today, her biggest one being climate change. I am a firm believer that this model will continue to have profound, deep impacts on how we live, how we work, how we learn, and what we make, and that we are still in the very early stages. But, as we become more and more familiar with this model, we're starting to pay more attention to the particular architecture of these networks, and the power dynamics built into them.
So, the problem that many in this space have identified is a growing concern about the imbalance of power between peer economy platforms and the participants they support, especially as the most mature platforms (Airbnb and Uber being the elephants in the room, but there will be many more) grow to be very large, wealthy and powerful companies. The problem is essentially one of trust. And specifically in the case of peer economy platforms and workers, it's about economics and control. One way to think about this is that as this space has matured, platforms have a tendency to "thicken" -- to do more, take more, and exert more control. So the question becomes, are participants here getting a fair deal, and do they have an appropriate amount of freedom and control? There is a growing sense that they may not be, and that alternative architectures need to be investigated. While this may feel scary to many observers of the space, especially those coming at this from a public interest perspective, we shouldn't be surprised to see this happen. Rather, this is what always happens as companies explore new spaces and establish profitable business models. So rather than look at this phenomenon simply as a brand new problem to be solved today, it's more useful to see it as yet another phase in a recurring cycle, that presents both known challenges and known opportunities. Looking back at the history of major tech platforms over the past 30 or so years, we can see this cycle turn (note: this is not intended to be exhaustive or complete):
(Note: the green boxes are companies, and the blue bubbles are "open" technologies like free software and open protocols -- i.e., venture capital and community capital, respectively) IBM and AT&T once had a monopoly on the PC and the telephone network, respectively, which was opened up by the PC clones and the modem going over-the-top of the telephone network (not to mention the government break-up of AT&T). Next, Microsoft had a lock on PC software through Windows and Office, and AOL (along w Prodigy, Compuserve, etc) had the online market locked down. This lasted until the proliferation of Linux and IP protocol stack, which poked a hole in Microsoft's desktop OS as well as AOL's walled garden, giving us the open internet. Then, on top of that newly open platform, today's leaders in web (Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, etc) and mobile (Apple, Google, Xaomi) built their businesses. It's worth noting that, with the exception of Android, there hasn't been a really meaningful hole poked in the business positions staked out by this generation of companies (though there have been attempts, such as Diaspora for Facebook and Pump.io for Twitter) Finally, we're left with today's peer/sharing/collaborative economy marketplace platforms. These are the new, venture-backed companies staking out territory and building what will become the next generation of powerful incumbents. And while we have seen the beginnings of open protocols that directly challenge their power (like the La'Zooz ridesharing protocol), it's all very very early. So there's the pattern: tech companies build dominant market positions, then open technologies emerge which erode the the tech companies' lock on power (this is sometimes an organized rebellion against this corporate power, and is sometime more of a happy accident). These open technologies then in turn become the platform upon which the next generation of venture-backed companies is built. And so on and so on; rinse and repeat. So, all that is to say: this is not a new thing. And that seeing this as part of a pattern can help us understand what to make of it, and where the next opportunities could emerge.
Given this moment in the cycle -- where we have a small number of large and powerful platforms in some sectors, and a growing sense of discomfort about that power -- how might people who affect change go about doing it? In this section, I want to really stress the "how do you get there part" more than the "what might an alternative architecture look like" part. It's quite easy to imagine a "driver-owned uber" (as many people here have suggested) in its fully realized form, but it's much more difficult to think about how such a thing might come into being. The history of technology is strewn with failed attempts to replace closed/proprietary systems with open ones. Here, I'll point out four ideas that may be helpful in thinking about this:
“Convenience trumps just about everything” -- Steve O'Grady, analyst at Red Monk (link)
Today at OuiShareFest, Aral Balkan from Ind.ie talked about a major failure of the open source movement over the past several decades: to sacrifice short-term usability and experience for long-term (and abstract to most people) freedoms. He framed this problem as "respect for experience" and "respect for utility" (or something along those lines) as the two partner values along with respect for human rights. I would agree with that, and anyone following this space can note the failure of past attempts at open platforms that just weren't usable enough (for example: openID).
"The Lindy Effect is real. Disruption is rare. But it does exist and it is caused by non-linear changes in technology." -- Albert Wenger, USV (link)
My colleague Albert discusses the Lindy Effect: the idea that every day that a platform idea exists extends its expected overall lifespan. In other words, technologies and ideas have momentum -- the longer they're around the longer they'll stay around. It is possible to "disrupt" them, but that requires a profound, non-linear technology change. And even then, they don't just disappear overnight. For example, Microsoft has endured two decades of disruption from the web -- first against Windows as the dominant OS, and then against Office as the dominant productivity suite -- but it still alive and kicking. So the disruption that challenged Microsoft didn't put them out of business, but it did open up the market for many many many others to enter. Looking at today, Uber clearly isn't going anywhere, though "open" challenges to them could open up the market for others. To my mind the non-linear change in technology that has the greatest potential to challenge today's incumbent platforms is the Blockchain (and related decentralized technologies) that are in the process of externalizing data from web and mobile applications (more on that below).
"Your margin is my opportunity" -- Jeff Bezos
This profound idea is not new to the business world, but it's nevertheless instructive for new technologies looking to compete against the new incumbents. Along the lines of "convenience trumps everything", cost matters. For example, I met a blockchain entrepreneur/hacker recently who was incensed about the margin that Etsy takes on transactions (and to most people Etsy is about as fuzzy bunny as you can get as a large web platform).
"The first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned by the creator of the block" -- Satoshi Nakamoto (link)
This is a line from the original Bitcoin white paper, and I include it to point out the importance of powerful incentives in deploying open technologies. There are two primary innovations in Bitcoin: 1) the distributed, open ledger; and 2) the financial incentive that drives participating computers to cooperate: mining bitcoins. To the extent that this incentive-to-cooperate model can be extended in other directions, we may be on to something big.
Given all of the above, here are a few things we're looking for at USV: Collaborative platforms in greenfield sectors To the first point about the value of networks (to society), there are many many important sectors still operating under inefficient bureaucratic hierarchical models, which are ripe to be re-architected in a network model (I'm thinking energy, health, education, and many others). I suspect that these sectors will be developed by "traditional" networks (e.g., venture-backed, centralized networks), as these have the ability to move the most quickly, to experiment with new models (failing often), and to help train sectors/cultures that a networked model is possible. Worker support services A major concern with the emerging power of web platforms (especially in the collaborative/sharing space) is worker power. We are already beginning to see platforms emerge to serve workers in this environment (e.g., SherpaShare, Coworker, Peers, the venerable Freelancers Union, etc) and will see many many more here. My belief is that "union 2.0" will be a platform, more than an organization, and its power will derive from the data leverage it's able to attain over the the platforms that employ its workers. Thin platforms One way to challenge "thick" platforms is to build "thin" platforms that do less, take less, and exert less control. We have invested in several of these (DuckDuckGo, compared to Google, Twitter, compared to Facebook, Sidecar compared to Lyft, etc) and are looking for more. Often times, "thin" also means decentralized in some way, pushing power, economics and control further out to the edge. New protocols Finally, new protocols that radically re-architect power, information and control. Inspired by Bitcoin and the blockchain, there is now tremendous energy in this space. It's early early days, but it does feel like this has the potential to become the next "open layer" that washes over the latest generation of big companies (see the diagram above) and cracks open the market even further. At USV, we've made several small investments in this space (OneName, and two that are not yet announced), and are looking for more. It's not clear yet where value will accumulate at this layer, and much of it may and should remain as "community capital" in the system. In conclusion: we are at a really interesting time with the maturity of the large web and mobile platforms, the rapid expansion of peer/sharing/collaborative platforms, and the emergence of distributed protocols. All of this has raised really interesting questions about innovation, global problem-solving, economics and control, and the discussion here will undoubtedly lead to short- and long-term impacts on how and what we build.
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