Investor Stories 28: What’s Next (Greathouse, Medved, Huston)

*Please excuse any errors in the below transcript

Nick: So, on to the special segment, we have #John Greathouse of #Rincon Venture Partners. John, are there any big sector changes or trends that you see on the horizon? If so, can you select a couple that may have significant impact or are position for outsized growth in the coming years?

John:9:10 – 11:32 (unclear)

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#Jon Medved

Nick: On today’s special segment, we have #Jon Medved. Jon, are there any big sector changes Indera thermals that you see on the horizon and if so, can you pick one or a couple that you think will have significant impact?

Jon: I think that there is a process work with the Internet of Things is absolutely real and while there’s a lot of hype around it, I think that the hype is justified and you take the Internet of Things and all the data that it’s going to throw off and then that’s going to lead into additional big data and additional analytics and additional smart systems, I think that the opportunities going forward are just huge because right now you’ve got so many pieces of the puzzle in place for enabling the next generation of entrepreneurial activity to really rock and roll. I’m very bullish about Internet of Things and “where it’s going to take us?”… I’m not sure I know exactly where it’s taking us but I have a feeling it’s going to take us very far.

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#John Huston

Nick: On today’s special segment, we have John Houston. John, I’d suspect you’re going to love this question but are there any big sector changes or trends that you see on the horizon and if so, can you highlight a couple and the impact that you think it’s position for?

John: No! I don’t have the self confidence that the upright bipeds with opposable thumbs who occupy earth are very good at being visionaries or forecasting this business and I say that because there’s always somebody. Once you know the answer and you look back, you can always find somebody who saw it coming. You always overlooked the tens of thousands who didn’t see it coming and therefore they’re not newsworthy.

Nick: Yeah.

John: So, you can always find that visionary but if you really track the track records of the visionaries, it’s pretty stunning how many times they’ve been wrong. The problem or the reason they’re successful is because we want visionaries. It sells and it’s very comforting to think somebody has this figured out. I just don’t think there’s adequate evidence that somebody has this figured out consistently and so I don’t spend any time trying to guess what the next cool thing is even if I thought I had the intellect or the technological expertise. So my answer is, “No!”

Nick: Well, I guess when you’re betting on teams first then that’s the most critical thing to valuate anyway.

John: Well I’m not suggesting you can’t get at particular areas and realize that they’re on a roll but seeing what’s coming around the corner there’s going to be hard. I mean, just look back at #Fisker and all the VCs who put hundreds of millions of dollars in Fisker and it was a really cool thing until it wasn’t and yet you can look at #Tesla and there are a lot of people who say, “That really is a cool thing!” While at the high level or somewhat similar is it not. So you can say that alternative energy transportation is a really cool thing. Yeah, I agree with that but who’s going to be successful in it? I couldn’t possibly figure that.