Jeff the Great Educates His People on the State of the Internet in 2013

An important conference in the technology sector kicked off this week. Its called D: All Things Digital (also called D11, for the 11th annual showing). Its an executive focused conference, a real who's who. One of the presentations was a great one by Mary Meeker of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. She presented on Internet Trends, 2013.

Her presentation is one of the most valuable gems I've found on the internet this year. Its a 100+ slide presentation chalked full of great industry insights. Its the kind of data that research firms charge $5k+ for. If you are starting an internet company anytime soon, this presentation should be where your research begins.

Because its a long presentation, I've taken the time to highlight some of the slides I found most interesting and or helpful. A lot of this is based on what is important to my business, so if I excluded something it doesn't mean it isn't valuable or interesting, just not for me. Finally, please note that these slides and the included data are not mine, they are borrowed from the full presentation that I have linked back to in multiple forms.

Video & YouTube

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In 2012, I was fascinated by the fact that every minute, users were uploading 70 hours of video to YouTube. Thats 1 minute, 70 hours. Guess what? Just 1 year later, we are now uploading 100 hours of video content to YouTube every minute. A 43% increase from 2012 to 2013. Stats like this make the $1.65 billion dollar purchase of YouTube in 2006 a bargin for Google.

Global Internet Usage

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Its no surprise that internet access is peaking in the United States. If you want internet in the US, you can get it. Most people can afford it at some level. Guess what? Much of the rest of the world is still catching up. China is experiencing 10% year over year growth of internet use. China currently has more than twice as many internet users than the US does, and still only 42% of Chinese people use the internet. Imagine when China hits 78% penetration like the US has! India is another one to note. Only 11% of Indians use the internet, but thats growing at a rate of 26% per year. Soon, the US will only represent a small fraction of total global internet usage. Companies better be prepared for this.

Global Leadership in the US

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The US is a country of immigrants. In fact, 99% of us are either decedents of immigrants or are immigrants ourselves. The above chart shows us that 15 of the 25 largest technology companies in the US were founded by either 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. Apple, Google, IBM....all founded by 1st or 2nd generation Americans. Intel, eBay, Yahoo...the list goes on and on. America is lucky to count these people as citizens.

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However, a problem is looming. At the same time we are turning away talented skilled technology workers, we aren't producing nearly enough computer science graduates ourselves. Looking forward through 2020, for every computer science graduate that gets a job, nearly 2 more jobs go unfilled. We could fill this gap by increasing the number of highly skilled technology workers we issue visas to, but for some reason we aren't. Not only are those brilliant people not filing these open jobs, they won't be able to start a company in the US, for our benefit. This is a huge problem.

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Culture of Sharing

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One of the most exciting trends over the last year or two has been the emerging culture of sharing. It started with Yelp, then Facebook, and then Twitter. Now, however, the culture is shifting in a fascinating way. We have wearables...fitness trackers like the Jawbone UP and the Fitbit that track our every movement, even our sleep, and share the stats with our friends on Facebook and Twitter! The above graphic shows that just one device, the Jawbone UP, is already tracking billions of steps every day, and hundreds of thousands of hours of sleep. Guess what? Its just the beginning. I think we'll see HUGE growth of wearables over the next year or two. I'm talking 30%-50% growth, if not more. Big, big trend.

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Don't believe me that we'll be sharing more and more details like our daily activity? Check out the above chart. There are 14 countries who's citizens share more of their daily lives on the internet than American's do. In fact, we are nearly 10 points lower than the world average!

Computers

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The way we compute is changing. The orange line in the above chart is tablets. Look how fast they emerged. They have already outnumbered desktop shipments and they are neck-and-neck with laptops. The tablet category didn't even exist a few years ago, and now it dominates. I expect desktops to continue to decline while laptops will continue their volatile performance but ultimately continue to be a major player for the next few years.

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 With the change in hardware comes a change in operating systems. The above chart shows us that Microsoft is loosing importance just as fast, if not faster, as it gained it in the 1980's. Just as Atari and Commodore where players in the past, I suspect future years will have Playstation, Xbox, and Roku emerging on this chart as the living room becomes as important to the internet as the office.

Tech Company Finances

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So what does this all mean? Well, in a relatively short amount of time, tech companies can earn a lot of money. Facebook, in just 9 years has grown to $12 billion in annual revenue. In comparison  the 25 year old software company I worked for prior to becoming an entrepreneur was the largest in its industry with $3.5 billion in sales. Facebook not only has $12 billion in revenues, they have relatively low R&D expense and high gross margins compared to traditional companies.

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LinkedIn is a great example of the financial success that tech companies can achieve in a short period of time. More than 200 million registered users, and more than 85% gross margin. These impressive numbers account for their $18 billion valuation, and strong quarterly performance has resulted in an 80% in stock price since their IPO about 2 years ago (both the DOW and the SP500 are up under 25% over the same time period).
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Well, thats it...thats the state of the internet in 2013. Big thanks to Mary Meeker and KPCB for their hard work and providing it to us for free.

The Future is Here, Proclaims Jeff the Great

Google is one step closer to directly connecting our brains to all of the information in the world. Thats the end goal...just think about something and you'll automatically just know all. It will pop into your brain from nowhere.

Think I'm crazy? Well, I probably am but thats not the point. One of my favorite books is called The Big Switch written by Nicholas Carr. Near the end of the book, about how computing is following a similar path towards a ubiquitious commodity, Carr talks about Goolge and their founders vision for our future. Long story short, organizing the world's information, their stated mission, is only a means to the real end. The real end goal of Larry and Sergy is to 'plug' our brains directly into the internet. Google Glass is the next major step in that direction.

Here is the idea. First, we store and organize all the world's information. Next, add cameras and microphones to our daily lives. Then, begin monitoring our brain waves in order to connect brain patterns to what we see, hear, and say. With enough data and enough processing power, we can start to connect the dots between our thoughts and information.

Google Glass is a significant step in that direction. Glasses with a camera, microphone, and a heads up display. Without any action on your part, they'll be able to identify a person standing in front of you, and display relevant information about that person automatically. This is not some futuristic device that a bunch of nerds are dreaming about. Google Glass will ship to its first set of customers in the summer of 2013, with general availability by the 2013 holiday season.

Next step will be the ability for the glasses to analyze your brain waves. They'll record how your brain behaved when you saw the person standing in front of you, and how your brain behaved when the info about that person was displayed to you. With enough data like that, from you and hundreds of millions of other people, they'll eventually be able to know when you want info purely based on brain waves. Google is essentially the worlds largest research project to map the brain. Its a project that I consider to be bigger than sequencing the human genome, as the US did from 1990 through 2003.

So in the very near future, when you see me or someone else wearing those odd looking Google Glasses, dont laugh at us. Remember that we are contributing to humanity's largest research project that will lead to your grandkids having a direct thought connection to all the information ever recorded in human history.

This is gonna be big.

Jeff the Great's Top Technology Companies in Portland

The Portland Business Journal on March 9th, 2012 published a list of the Top 25 Technology Companies in the Portland area. They ranked using number of global employees but also listed the number of Portland area employees. Effectively, this is a list of the largest tech companies with a presence in Portland.

Wow, did they miss the boat. Of course the likes of Xerox and Intel made the list (#1 and #3 respectively), but the omissions and selections get more and more odd as you read down. For example, at #25 they list Infinity Internet with 27 worldwide employees, 26 in the Portland area. You mean to tell me that the 25th largest tech company in Portland only has 27 employees?

So I did some research and quickly discovered that the Portland Business Journal blatantly ignored local companies that were obvious choices for the list. They even ignored multiple companies that they wrote about in the very same March 9th issue (Fisrv, Monsoon, Axium, Symantec)!

So out of respect for the great companies that were omitted for the list, here are some that should have been mentioned. The figures in parenthesis are my estimations of local employees based on data collected from LinkedIn plus a sprinkling of my personal knowledge.

• Act-On Software (over 60)
• Avnera (about 60)
• Axium (about 80)
• CD Baby (over 200)
• Clearedge Power (more than 100)
• Digimarc (over 100)
• EasyStreet (at least 30)
• Elemental (about 60)
• Fiserv (as many as 300)
• Galois (about 35)
• iovation (over 75)
• Janrain (110)
• Jive Software (200+)
• Monsoon (about 84)
• Netflix (about 200)
• Pixelworks (about 32)
• Puppet Labs (about 40)
• Rumblefish (about 30)
• Urban Airship (about 60)
• Shopigniter (about 30)
• SolarWorld (hundreds)
• Symantec (100, even after layoffs)
• Synopsys (about 300)
• Thetus (about 50)
• ViaWest (at least 25)

This isn't even an expansive list, there are more but I had to stop researching! Even the big guys have a presence here. Microsoft has about 150 in the Portland area, and Apple has at least 175 (both retail AND engineering). Finally, I didn't even list companies with fewer than 20 employees which I stumbled upon in my research. There are easily a few dozen tech companies with 10-20 local employees.

So, Portland Business Journal, I find it hard to believe you when you say "every attempt is made to ensure the thoroughness and accuracy of the list." It is especially frustrating when the only avenue to communicate errors and omissions is to send "corrections and additions on company letterhead to..." followed by your mailing address. Company letterhead, really? Why can't I just email you a list?

-Jeff the Great

Jeff the Great Innovates

While walking home from my morning coffee I was thinking some random thoughts about technology...specifically computers. Figured I'd write them down for future reflection.

I was recently reading an article in Fortune magazine about Steve Jobs and came across an interesting story about Henry Ford. He apparently said something like 'if I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me they wanted a faster horse.' In other words, we tend to think in the confines of what is in our world. So what if we were to eliminate the limitations of our technology?

Here is what I've been contemplating lately:

• Why are silicon wafers still round? I mean, I know why they are round, but why can't we change that? There is a lot of waste when producing computer chips. Look at all the wasted space on solar panels. Couldn't all sorts of waste and inefficiency be eliminated with square shaped wafers?

• Why are the pathways on computer chips linear and with 90 degree angles? Do straight lines always use space more efficiently than curved lines? Maybe they do, I don't know.

• Why can't I carry extra processing power in my pocket, to be plugged into my computer when I am doing processor intensive computing? If I can buy an Intel processor for under $75, why can't someone put that in a pocket size 'drive' and add some software to make this new external unit into auxiliary processing power? I sometimes do such intense Excel work that my entire computer freezes for 5+ minutes while Excel commands 100% of my processing power. Sure would be nice to plug something in to give my laptop a little bit of help.

• Speaking of utilizing computer processors, lets talk about all the other gadgets I own that run on a processor. Wouldn't it be great if I could 'lend' the processing power of my Blackberry, Playstation or your iPhone to help my desktop do some work? I mean, all those devices have powerful computer chips just sitting in them, unused most of the time. Lets put them to work!

• And finally, why isn't every TV also a computer monitor and every computer monitor a TV? I mean really, they are the same thing. And for that matter, why doesn't every set top box plug right into my home internet network? Is there any reason that my cell phone can connect to the internet but my cable box cannot?

So, who is gonna go out there and solve these problems? and don't bother leaving comments as to why all these things are the way they are, I really don't care. Let's start innovating and doing things differently.

Jeff the Great Spies CitySpeek in the Wild!

Jeremiah and I both had a great day today, mostly because a tech blog we love covered CitySpeek.com, just 2 weeks after launch!

TechVibes.com had some great things to say about CitySpeek that really encouraged us and gave us some extra motivation. In part, TechVibes writes:

I really like their concept of categorized Speeks - what I think is best about it is that you can search through public Speeks by category. Check out events, questions or funny stuff; what might be really interesting tweets often get buried in my Twitter stream, and this is a way to sort through posts if you are looking for something in particular. You can receive speeks through the CitySpeek website, or through IM or email.

I've linked the full article below. Give it a read and make sure to check back with TechVibes daily for more great coverage of web startups!

CitySpeek hopes to appeal to Twitter-phobic -TechVibes Blog, 12/23/2008

-Jeff the Great

Jeff the Great is High on Speed

A good friend of mine posted some impressive internet speeds over at his blog so I thought I'd do the same. Both of our speeds make most internet users in the US incredibly jealous.

I am running FiOS from Verizon. I am actually disappointed in this test since I am paying for 5mbps upload and as you can see I only got 3.2. Oh well, still faster than most.

-Jeff the Great

p.s. Steve...I'm still faster! j/k

Jeff the Great Participates in GPIE

I recently signed up to participate in the Great Portland Interview Experiment which was brought to the Rose city and is being managed by Chris O'Rourke. I was interviewed by one of my new best online friends, Ramona White. She asked me some fun questions and then posted the interview over on her blog. With her permission I have re-posted the interview below. Make sure to check out Ramona's blog MouthFeel for a daily dose of poetry and other great writing.

Without further to do, enjoy!

-Jeff the Great

What is one thing about you most of us don’t already know?

Besides the fact that I fell off a 60 foot cliff and survived or that I have witnessed a murder? I think most people would be surprised to know that I was a volunteer junior high youth group director for three years. The church I was attending had its entire youth staff resign in one summer so I called and said “hey, let me know if you need anyone to stuff envelopes.” I received a return call a few days later from a guy at the church who said something to the effect of “thanks for your offer to stuff envelopes, how would you like to be the junior high youth guy until we hire someone?” Next thing I know, I added the title of Jr High Youth Director to my resume and did that for three years in addition to my job at Nike. I finally resigned right before my wedding; I figured I should dedicate all my time to my new wife.

You seem to share the love of bacon common in the PDX tech community. Have you always loved bacon or did it develop through your associations in this group?

I’m what they call a “large man” and thus it’s a requirement for me to eat bacon as often as possible. Hey, you don’t get a body like this without working at it! If you asked my parents, I think they’d probably say that when I was a kid, restaurants hide the bacon when I walked in for Sunday brunch.

Do you consider yourself a geek?

Wow, I don’t know! I mean it’s cool to be a geek now, right? I do consider myself a geek but not a computer geek. I am a geek because I am writing a white paper on an economic theory I developed years ago and can’t get it out of my mind. I am a geek because to me, fun is developing a complex analysis of the thousands of mutual funds available at my online brokerage. And that’s just Saturday, wait till I tell you about Sunday!

Why do you think techy people are so fond of sporks?

Sporks are to techies as the swiss army knife is to MacGuyver. On a related note, I have some tiny plastic forks that have a hinge on the handle so that you can fold them in half. They fit in a wallet, how cool!

What is your favorite beverage while you’re working?

Coffee! I drink it like crazy. I switched to a coffee mug instead of a Styrofoam cup so that it appears like I care about the environment. I probably have 6-8 mugs of coffee before lunch. Then after lunch, I’ll throw back another 1 or 2 mugs. Around 3pm I usually need more but I have been trying to do decaf at that point.

Do you listen to music or podcasts while you’re working and if so what?

I do occasionally. My favorite source of music is Pandora Radio. Not sure how I discovered it, maybe through TechCrunch.com, but once I tried it out I was hooked. I have three stations setup. The first and most frequently listened to is seeded with Counting Crows, Augustana, The Killers, Blues Traveler, and Keane. Then sometimes I feel a little funky and I switch to a light rap station. Then, when the day has totally gone to shit, I bust out the old skool rap station which is seeded with 2Pac, Eazy-E, Biggie and Mase.

“Me and Bobby McGee”- the Janis Joplin or the Kris Kristofferson?

Bobby McWho? Don’t tell anyone this, but I have never heard either version of that song until I googled ‘em just now. However, I don’t think Janis Joplin has ever been used to describe me in any way, so I’ll say Kris Kristofferson.

How did you end up launching CitySpeek and where do you hope it will go?

CitySpeek isn’t the first project that I have developed with my business partner, Jeremiah. It is however the highest of quality and our first with a shot at being a major player. Jeremiah has an incredibly creative mind and almost two years ago now he invited me to work with him on a project. Three web sites later we have CitySpeek. The idea came from our new and shared love for micro-blogging (or micro-messaging as I prefer to say). We noticed two things: First, micro-messaging was going beyond the early adopter techie crowd and into the mainstream. Second, we saw a frustration from users as they tried to group themselves by interest and share media with their networks. Our initial idea was a site with sub-domains for each major US city but it eventually warped into what we have now: a micro-messaging site for the rest of the internet. Integrated pics and video, interest groups, message categories, message mapping and Flickr integration (the first of many social network tie-ins). A common misconception is that we are going after Twitter users and that is just not true. Twitter is great but it’s not for everyone. CitySpeek was made for the average internet users and we are marketing to groups. Church groups, softball teams, coworkers, alumni associates, etc. Of course we wouldn’t complain if a twitter user switched to CitySpeek as their primary messaging service, but we understand if they don’t.

What question do you wish I had asked you and what’s the answer?

I don’t know, there’s no one question I was hoping for. I love my wife and can always brag about her. I’ve been consuming books like bacon lately so that’s always fun. This was a blast and your questions were great! Thanks for the opportunity and your time Ramona, it’s been great to meet you through the GPIE!

Jeff the Great joins PDXTech

I am a big fan of LinkedIn, I think it is one of the most useful 'social networks' on the web (though I hate that term and don't think it applies well to LinkedIn). I recently joined the Nike Global Alumni Network on LinkedIn to allow me better access to past co-workers without having to add them directly to my network.

Last week I apprently helped inspire the creation of a new LinkedIn group for Portland, Oregon area technology professionals. If you are interested in joining, follow the link below:

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/125526/41DEA53EE25B

-Jeff the Great

Jeff the Great Puts Out a Call to Action

If you are in or around the Oregon area and love technology, you have probably read my favorite blog: Silicon Florist. A few weeks ago Rick, the author of Silicon Florist, wrote a story about how Oregon students get a "D" in technology education.

Lots of people commented on the blog post. In fact it may have been a record response to a Silicon Florist article. People were generally passionate about doing something to improve technology education in Oregon. It was a great sight, the Portland technology community was jumping into action.

Rick followed up a few weeks later with a call to action and a few ways we can start to get the ball rolling. One was a newly formed discussion group through Google Groups (thanks to Dave Merwin) and the other was a proposed Silicon Florist internship program.


What great plans! Except for one thing. The Google discussion group has been quiet. What happened to the folks that generated the 30+ comments on Rick's original blog post? Where is the passion and desire to act that everyone expressed?

I am disappointed.

So I put out a(nother) call to action. If you care about technology education in Oregon. If you care about the jobs your kids will be qualified for when they are your age. If you love to complain about public education as much as I do. Get off your butt and join me in making a difference.

See you in the Oregon Education & Technology Google Group.

-Jeff the Great