TALKING TECH

A great hour long interview with Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures. Skip to 6:30 to begin the interview.

A few nights ago, I had the pleasure of attending a fireside chat with Tom Perkins & Frank Caufield of KPCB (more info). Although I had already listened to most of the chat’s content before, (from Tom’s interviews in the 2011 documentary Something Ventured) I had always admired Tom Perkins and his role in co-founding one of Sand Hill Road’s first venture capital firms so it was an exciting opportunity to hear from him in person.

His talk consisted mostly of his experiences on HP’s Board of Directors and his conflict with Patricia Dunn alongside some side tangents about Mark Hurd, The Maltese Falcon, Danielle Steel, and the SF Ballet. Although the fireside chat itself was relatively short, the Q&A session afterwards was highly enjoyable and I had the opportunity to shake his hand and ask him a few questions.

I’ve summarized my questions and his answers below to the best of my memory (not exact or quoted):

Q: With the recent rise of tech start-ups in Silicon Valley, many VC’s and angels have taken the “spray-and-pray” approach similar to that of McClure’s 500 Startups or Yuri’s recent 150K investments in YC. Has KPCB ever considered altering their investment strategy from a quality over quantity approach towards this spray-and-pray technique for fear of losing out on that one big social media company?

A: To answer your long question, yes we’ve started a social media fund and we are investing in these types of companies. (It was an unsatisfying answer and he most likely misheard my question given its length)

Q: Given your MIT/HBS background alongside your entrepreneurial venture into a “laser” company while working at HP, why did you never consider taking the serial entrepreneur route vs. the VC lifestyle?

A: To put it simply, the only company I ever started was the laser one and it was my only good idea. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to have great ideas and I just never had any, so I decided I’d rather just work with other entrepreneurs and help them grow their companies. I wouldn’t recommend starting your own VC firm today as the industry just has too much competition but that’s not saying you shouldn’t work within a VC firm.

While reading Dan Gilbert’s “Stumbling Upon Happiness”, I came across an interesting fact that the only difference between humans and other species is the ability to think about the future.

And yet, despite our forecasting prowess, it still remains very difficult for technology companies to convince the general population that adopting a new technology for a large upfront cost will garner even larger long-term savings. A prime example lies in the ever present conflict of LEDs and incandescent light bulbs.

Consider a Philips Lighting Ambient LED 12.5 watt bulb costing $39.97 at your local hardware store.

A typical LED lasts 25,000 hours (3 years if run 24/7, 12 years if used nightly), uses 12.5 watts, and costs $37.50 to run for those 25,000 hours.

A conventional 60-watt bulb lasts 1000 hours, uses 60-watts, and costs $180 to run for 25,000 hours.

Given this math, there is clearly a huge benefit of long-term savings in using LEDs and yet the majority of the population refuses to pay that upfront $39.97 to save money down the line. Go figure.