THE NEW FRONTIER
Around 20 yrs ago Donald Fagen (Steely Dan front man) wrote his eponymous song referencing The New Frontier, the opportunities and challenges that lay ahead:
"Well I can't wait till I move to the city
Till I finally make up my mind
To learn design and study overseas
Confess your passion, your secret fear
Prepare to meet the challenge of the new frontier"
We live in extraordinary business times:
digitalisation is producing crypto currencies which are not correlated to national economies; and
blockchain is enabling self regulating communities to operate in an orderly and fully transparent, decentralised world, outside the constraints of the established capitalist system, leveraging tokenisation which offers independent potential macro economic prosperity and utility.
Is BTC on the way to $1 million or doomed to be wiped out? (See Impact Theory podcast, link in the notes)
Some people believe this is the beginning of the end of capitalism - as an old school venture capitalist this is a revolutionary concept but impossible to deny out of hand.
Meanwhile robots and augmented intelligence offer the potential of unprecedented productivity gains, but human productive employment is under intense threat.
AI could even represent an existential threat to humans within a lifetime.
The 5th IR is around the corner (I will have lived and worked through 3x IRs by 2035).
Startups can create IP with unprecedented, immense value on a seemingly ever diminishing capex budget, powered by exponentially accelerating technological advancements.
So many revolutionary changes are happening simultaneously.
Definitely thought provoking.
If that's not enough, Governments run by feverishly ever-polarising and extreme politicians, are engaged in a macro-economic version of the children's game, "Musical Chairs" in which money is printed at rapidly accelerating rates, inflation is rampant and the reset that is typically enforced by economic meltdown is kicked like a can, down the road.
Investment in this arena is definitely not for the feint hearted.
WELCOME TO THE NEW FRONTIER
Tom Bilyeu 's excellent recent Impact Theory podcast on Bitcoin going to Zero or $1 million inspired this post ⬇️
📈 I post on startups, scale-ups and exits
💰 CIO of Gresham PE a $1 bn AUM lower mid market PE fund (2000-2009)
🔟 Founded and/or promoted > 10 startups
💵 Raised > $1 bn for startups since 2003 as principal/lead advisor
⌛ Amassed > 100k hours deal making experience
IR5 Represents the greatest value creation opportunity of ALL TIME
🪙 Decentralisation via crypto and blockchain is coming, ready or not
🧑🏽🎤 Protagonist personality type : creative, intuitive, idealistic team player, puts others first. Zero DIY 👨🏽🔧 skills.
If this post resonates please reach out to connect.
