Roger McNamee is probably the coolest investor I know. He has called it right so many, many times and just did it again with Facebook. You have to pay attention to him. I have been “schooled” by him on more than one occassion and for that I am eternally grateful.
Here are his thoughts on the road ahead, taken from a Mashable keynote presentation he made the other day. Great stuff if you want to try and make money in web and mobile tech in the years ahead.
The shift is away from the desktop experience of free undifferentiated content. Mobile users don’t navigate the Internet with Google searches. They use apps, which deliver a better experience. And they spend much more time within those apps than on any web story.
Instead of needing tens of millions of lightly engaged users in order to be considered successful, McNamee hypothesizes that future success will come from smaller numbers of even more engaged — and thus more valuable — users.
It will, he believes, will be built not on the Google-controlled HTML4 web nor within Apple-controlled apps, but using HTML5, which allows for differentiated, engaged experiences without the downsides of the app store.
“The basic success factors going forward are going to be exactly opposite of those we’ve had in recent years,” he said.
You can get his entire presentation here.
Awesome stuff. I’m definitely paying attention.
I love Roger and his ideas on the future landscape of technology. If only we could sit down together, I’d love to pick his brain!