The Queen of the Internet Surveys Her Kingdom
Everything is looking up, according to Mary Meeker, even if global smartphone growth is trending down.
Hi Backchannel readers, it’s Jessi.
On Wednesday, Kleiner Perkins investor Mary Meeker delivered her annual internet trends report at Code Conference, the annual south-of-Los Angeles gathering that feels as much like a summer camp reunion as a tech confab. Meeker always presents early in the morning of the second day. To tech newbies, her presentation must seem like one of the strangest rituals in the industry — a core dump of stats, charts, and headlines, dense with exotic acronyms and hockey-stick curves. But it’s ambrosia to tech business insiders. At Code, attendees tend to meander in and out of sessions depending on the popularity of the speaker, but the seats are always filled for Meeker’s unveiling.
Basically, Meeker is delivering tech’s State of the Union address. To wit: Meeker’s report not only captures the internet moment in time, but also sets the agenda for anyone attempting to get in on the next big thing. Missing it could be missing a stake in the next unicorn.
This year, after explaining that her presentation was meant to be read, not heard, Meeker raced through her 355 slides in 33 minutes with all of the charisma of Apple’s Siri—picking up speed as she went. Every year, she adds more slides. In her first presentation, delivered in 2001, she had just 25. This year, no one seemed to care about her presentation style; they were too busy scrutinizing her data — and tweeting the gems.
By now, you’ve likely come across her biggest bets on, oh, every tech blog you’ve read. She says global smartphone growth is slowing, though it’s surging in India. Netflix is growing, while TV viewership continues to decline. Voice really is a big deal — one in five mobile queries were made by voice, and, she says, accuracy is now at 95 percent. She’s bullish on all sorts of things, like the rise of tech in China, the importance of immigrants to the industry, and the coming boom in healthcare tech.
But why exactly does Meeker’s data dump resonate so strongly? Because she’s one of a kind. Meeker’s been at this forever. As an analyst at Morgan Stanley, she had an unwavering conviction that all business would digitize. In late 1995, when just 35 million people were online, she published The Internet Report, which quickly became a bible for anyone trying to grok the web. You could buy your own 322-page copy at your local Barnes & Noble. In it, she predicted rather forcibly that within five years, 150 million would surf the ‘net. (In fact, more than twice that many people were online by 2000. Even Meeker could not be optimistic enough about the biggest sea change in our time.)
In those heady internet years, Meeker was the top-ranked industry analyst working with Morgan Stanley’s top banker, Ruth Porat. And though she was certainly party to the stock boosterism that landed many of her peers in trouble in the early aughts, she truly believed in the potential of the companies she backed. Unlike peers such as Henry Blodget or Frank Quattrone, she was never indicted or fined. She continued as Morgan Stanley’s rockstar internet analyst until 2010, when she joined Kleiner Perkins. These days, Meeker leads growth stage investments for the firm. (Porat, too, eventually moved to tech; she’s now Alphabet’s chief financial officer.)
Meeker is not a seer. She hasn’t been right about everything. But for decades, she has pored through voluminous amounts of data and lived the history of the web, and she scrutinizes all of her inputs to make educated guesses about its future. That’s the reason why, in the weeks to come, founders and investors alike will slip her slides into their own funding requests and board presentations.
And already, they’re making bets on how many slides she’ll slip into next year’s presentation. 400, anyone?
This week on Backchannel:
The Melt had cash, technology, and some of Silicon Valley’s finest minds — yet it failed to disrupt the humble sandwich. Bianca Bosker on how the trendiest grilled cheese venture got burnt.
Steve Jobs had a vision to resurrect pre-tech Silicon Valley in his new HQ. It was up to this hippie arborist to make it happen. Steven Levy on Apple Park’s tree whisperer.
Checking your electronics is as risky as it is inconvenient. Sigh. Dan Gillmor on what to do if the laptop ban goes global.
