Source: Ben Evans Presentation (128pgs)

Title: "Tech in 2020: Standing on the shoulders of giants"

Author: "Benedict Evans is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. As a long-time mobile analyst, Benedict has been working in the media and technology industries for 15 years. He first entered the industry as a sell-side equity analyst for investment banks before moving on to strategy and business development roles at Orange, Channel 4 and NBC Universal. Benedict writes about and discusses strategic and operating issues around consumer technology, ecosystems and mobile platform on his blog, and on Twitter @BenedictEvans."

Takeaways

Internet Trends

• Nearly adults are connected (91% mobile, 73% smartphones)
• Ecommerce is a $500B market, but still only 15% of $3.6T Total Retail Sales (USA)
• TV/Cable Subscriptions are down 20% since 2011 (USA)
  • Among teens this is more acute, TV/Cable Subscriptions are down 50% since 2016
  • 33% of original series productions are coming from streaming services (e.g. Netflix, Amazon)
• Today, more than 40% of heterosexual couples meet their partner online ( ~0% in 1995; 20% in 2005)
• Innovation will continue to grow/come from outside of the USA and at an accelerated pace. 15 years ago (2005), VC investments in the US used to represent ~10x (1000%) the combined investment from the Rest of the World (RoW). Today, the US investment is about the same as RoW (~50% US, 50% RoW)

Regulation of Tech Companies & Why it is Challenging

• Google and Facebook have ridiculous market dominance in Search (~90%), Social (~70%), Online Ads (~70%), Overall Ads (~40%)
• While it's easy to say "break them up," the issues at hand are complex. "Which problem are you trying to fix? Few of the issues that make people worry about ‘big tech’ relate to anti-trust"
  • Do we know what we want?
    • "There’s bad stuff on your platform – take it down"
      • "What does ‘take down’ mean? ‘Social networks’ are a mix of many publishing forms with different speech and distribution models"
        • E.g. Advertising→Recommendation Engine→Public Feeds→Groups→Private Feeds→Group Messages→1:1 Communication
      • "What does 'bad' mean."
        • "It’s not just ‘China’ - liberal democracies have widely varying attitudes to free speech"
  • There are major tradeoffs whichever way you look at it

Favorite Slides

• Internet Trends
• Regulation of Tech Companies & Why it is Challenging (pg 66 onward)

Software ate the world, so all the world’s problems get expressed in software

(We connected everyone, including the bad people)