I remember having a very frank conversation with my mentor in the aftermath of the .com crash, 9/11 terror attacks, and recession of early 2002. I was the CTO of a startup that he was the lead investor in and we were struggling to make sense of the “new normal” landscape. He said that the future promised to us by the .com boom years of 1995–2000 was just too early and that it needed a “catastrophic forcing event” to propel it forward. Indeed he was right, the events between April 2000 (.com …

Before the pandemic and economic upheaval caused by COVID19, the top issue dominating the tech news was Artificial Intelligence. The major subtopic that dominated the zeitgeist was: will AI automate your job?

In short, before the pandemic, there was a low likelihood that net job loss from AI would be that high. While a lot of jobs probably were going to be automated in the coming decade, AI would also create a lot of better, well paying, jobs. The problem of course is that the people displaced by that automation most likely won’t have the skill sets for the new jobs created, causing tremendous social issues. …

In the aftermath of WWII, Japan’s economy was in ruins. Its manufacturing industries found that they did not have the raw materials and resources to build enough items to keep any meaningful inventory. Compared to American car manufacturers who produced millions of cars a year up front and then distributed them to dealerships, the Japanese could only produce thousands at a time at best.

Lean Manufacturing is Born

In 1948 at Toyota, Taiichi Ohno, turned this disadvantage into an advantage. Ohno created the Toyota Production System (TPS), a system that eliminated the need for inventory by integrating suppliers, manufacturers, and distribution for a “just in time” production. By building the cars “on demand” and ordering the raw materials “on demand”, Toyota only produced as many blue cars a year as was needed, as opposed to Ford and GM in the United States that estimated the demand for blue cars at the beginning of the year, built them, and then had to sell off the unused inventory at year end fire sales. …

Last week myself and 200,000 of my closest friends made our annual visit to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. As usual it was a crowded, hectic, sensory stimulating, and informative event.

Catching up with some of my CES veteran friends on the last day of the event, they said to me: “CES was lame this year. There was nothing here to WOW me.” My friends were looking at CES with purely a consumer eye: the major announcements were just bigger and higher resolution TVs and cool concept cars. Incremental changes at best over last year for sure.

I told them that this CES was one of my most inspiring for what I saw from my Venture Capital eye. As a VC, I saw five things that did WOW me. …

Last weekend was the 3rd annual e-Zest and Fresco Capital Hackathon in Pune, India. The theme of the event was “Blockchain for Good.”

The Hackathon was kicked off on Saturday morning by e-Zest CEO and co-founder Devendra and myself. After some set up, the teams began coding for the next 24 hours. We had about 80 teams/200 developers which produced 75 Blockchain projects.

After a few hours of coding the project themes started to emerge. Most projects were looking for gaps or inefficiencies in the marketplace and filling them with a blockchain solution. The developers were working very hard and only had a few breaks for food. Us organizers were equally as busy as we had a seminar, startup pitch event, and CIO roundtable going on at the same time. …

Over the past year there has been a lot of focus in the financial services community on social impact investing. Investors who have not traditionally been in the social impact space are now making changes to their investment charter to include mission driven, for profit companies. Venture Capital and Private Equity firms that have been ignoring social impact have jumped in as well.

The presence of the PE/VC crowd is changing the ecosystem and some traditional social impact investors are now taking a different approach. NGOs, foundations, and banks have always been in the game, but are starting to behave differently as well. …

The other day a startup was pitching me and stressed the importance of the startup competition that they won. They had a whole slide complete with photos and online articles written about their victory. I told the startup that they should delete that slide and not tell investors about the competition as startup competitions are a waste of time for startups. I advised the founder that the only competition they should be entering is the competition for customers in the marketplace.

Naturally I got a lot of pushback.

Based on my experience as an investor, a former judge at countless startups events, and the winner of the business plan competition in b-school, I laid out what is wrong with startup competitions. …

Last week, the Fresco team visited Washington DC and participated in a dialog with members of the US Congress. It was organized by a trade organization we are members of: ACT, the App Association.

ACT represents more than 5,000 tech companies in the United States. They advocate to the US government for a competitive environment that inspires and rewards innovation. Some of the issues ACT has prioritized this year involve law enforcement’s lawful access to data, cybersecurity, broadband, Net Neutrality and STEM education. …