A Frog in the Valley

I used the venture technologist label a few times in the last few years to describe what are my objectives for my professional life. The definition of what exactly is a venture technologist and how it would apply to me is something that has been soaking for a while in my gray matter. I can now say that it has moved from a vague concept to a more concrete approach to my business life.

I now have a clear definition of my aspirations and goals. Part business analyst, part technology architect, part strategy consultant, a venture technologist applies his deep technological know-how and his business acumen to invest in technology project with high returns. Sometimes these returns are of the financial realm, sometimes in the form of technological accomplishments. The great success would have both.

Since I am not sitting on a pile of money (I invested much of my last 10 years in my first startup, my 3 kids!) my investment approach is based on my uncanny ability to gather an impressive amount of information (mostly thru my favorite firehose) and my insights about what technology trends are emerging and the advances made possible by conditions changing… that’s what market intelligence is all about, no?

The first objective I had was to organize my interests from a loose gathering of ideas (lost in the sea of too many sources) to a “map” of technology trends for the sake identification, opportunity evaluation and investment : time, brain cycles and efforts to make happen the most promising ones. This exercise produced a “portfolio” of technology ideas/areas to invest in. The taxonomy is not completely finished, but here is the first outline of these worthwhile concepts with illustration :

• Digital Media. What happens we most of the media is produced, distributed and received digitally?
• Networked Media. A corollary of the preceding idea, focused on the distribution part of the equation.
• Prosumers, media journalists, user generated content… The two-way-ification of media. Not the end of broadcast, but a redistribution of power.
• Social [Media | Software | Networks]. Modern groupware, the influence of peers and friends on networked activities.
• The role (and business) of publicity (ads) in networked media. Or other altenative business models.
• Open and distributed Data and MetaData. Specifically as new technology permits the entry, collection, aggregation,distribution, display and action on this data (what happens to geodata once every cellphone is GPS enabled and all address contact on the web is in hCard format?).
• The (initial and continuous) distribution of applications within social and media networks. Think widgets on mySpace and software you install on your cell phone… or IPTV terminal.
• Commoditization of [Hardware | Software | Networks]. Open source VOIP, clusters of open source databases, free wifi, Gumstix Linux PC…
• Enabling Software Development [Technology | Methodology] with an order of magnitude of improvement [Time | Cost | Possibilities]. Ruby on Rails for web apps, Firefox as a platform for application (like songbird) and cross platform toolkit like GTK and WxWidgets+Python.
• Last but not least : International development. Globalization, glocalisation, the world as a village connected by the internet… en français aussi! I want to act as a bridge between North America and Europe + the french speaking communities elsewhere in the world (esp. Africa).

This is a first pass, some specific incarnations of important concepts are not present yet, gaming and intelligent devices would be two of those. But then again, MMORPG is social software + digital media if you look at it form the right angle and my new Treo 680 is part of the commoditization of hardware, software and networks…

I consider this as a cornerstone post, to be developped further as times permits. I know, I still have a good series stalled (web startup from scratch) but it’s only because I am doing the things I said I would be writing about… that will come too, sometimes!

Tags: startup, vc, web2