Valuable Technologies are Tools

Tools power humanity.

As an entrepreneur, I like to try and see into the future. It’s fun to think about or guess what the next big technology movement is going to be. What I find interesting to think about is not who the next big technology company is going to be but what the next big technology company is going to be doing.

I think it’s useful to use history as a guide to help try and predict the future. I want to focus on the most valuable tier of technology companies largely focused on consumer products because that’s what I am interested in. The type of companies that have shaped the world that we live in today. Companies like Apple, Google and Facebook.

So why are these companies so successful? There are lots of things that go into building a successful company but all of them have some underlying idea that is at the core of the business. Since I am talking about technology companies, that idea is a technology. For Apple it is the computer, for Google it is the search engine, and for Facebook it is the social network. These technologies are intertwined in many ways but the most interesting relationship for me is that they are all tools.

Human beings for our entire history have been obsessed with tools. We used them to build fires or hunt animals in our early days. We used them to help grow crops to feed our early villages. We used them to get from place to place across vast distances in our early nations. And now we are using them to access the world’s information at the tip of our fingers.

Lots of technology companies do very well and are successful but I think what really sets the ones that change the world apart from the rest is that they are tools that help advance humanity. They give us the means to create and make. They don’t force features upon us but instead allow use to use them to create our own hopes and dreams.

I think this is what we find in technologies such as 3D printing, drones, AI, biotech, solar energy and bitcoin. So if you’re building a company where one of these technologies is at the core, well maybe you just might be building the next Apple or Google or Facebook. And I think I can speak for all of humanity when I say I can’t wait until you do.