Ignorance and Venture Capitalism
A while back, I wrote about how venture capitalists (VC) have to think illogically to decide which companies to invest in. And Ben Evans just showed that the VC’s job is even harder . He starts with an obvious point: “It hasn't been possible to have read 'everything' for a couple of hundred years (since Erasmus, perhaps). It hasn't been possible to understand all of engineering or technology for perhaps a hundred or a hundred and fifty years. And today, it isn't really possible to understand all even of the internet or mobile - not all at once. There are simply too many things going on for any one person even to know the key basics in every relevant field, never mind become an expert or have some insight.” That inevitably makes it extremely hard, if not impossible, for anyone to predict where technology is headed. On the other hand, this very ignorance may be the cause of the next Big Disruption: “People are so ignorant that they don't know somet...