covid lessons

I recently read a great article by one of the greatest modern thinkers – Yuval Harari… 

Multi-line chart with smaller detail chart showing employment in agriculture from 1400s for various coutnries. Inset chart is detailed from 1991

It reminds me of the Wear Sunscreen speech that we should adapt to our current predicaments… (see adaptation in next post!)

A couple of things standout from the article:

. humanity is far from helpless

. Epidemics are no longer uncontrollable forces of nature

. Science is great! 😉

. Covid has underlined the power of information technology

. One of the most remarkable things about the Covid year is that the internet didn’t break

. As humanity automates, digitalises and shifts activities online, it exposes us to new dangers – potential digital infrastructure crashes (our next “covid”)

. Science cannot replace politics – and it is a pity…

. Our scientific achievements have placed an enormous responsibility on the shoulders of politicians – a lot of them have failed us…

. One reason for the gap between scientific success and political failure is that scientists co-operated globally, whereas politicians tended to feud

. we have to be beware of future digital dictatorships

. we should never allow too much data to be concentrated in any one place.

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. People of all political camps should agree on at least three main lessons:

First, we need to safeguard our digital infrastructure. It has been our salvation during this pandemic, but it could soon be the source of an even worse disaster.

Second, each country should invest more in its public health system. This seems self-evident, but politicians and voters sometimes succeed in ignoring the most obvious lesson.

Third, we should establish a powerful global system to monitor and prevent pandemics. In the age-old war between humans and pathogens, the frontline passes through the body of each and every human being. If this line is breached anywhere on the planet, it puts all of us in danger. Even the richest people in the most developed countries have a personal interest to protect the poorest people in the least developed countries. If a new virus jumps from a bat to a human in a poor village in some remote jungle, within a few days that virus can take a walk down Wall Street.

 

 

Trends to expect for 2022

The Top 10 Technology and Business Trends of 2022

The Top 10 Technology and Business Trends of 2022

Momentum in Life Science Technologies

Networking and Interconnectivity: Expansion of 5G-6G and Satellite-Based Internet Usage

High-Performance Computing Becomes Mainstream

Continued Growth in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, and Cloud Computing

Internet Security and Privacy Dominate

The Metaverse Will Shine in 2022

NFT Platforms Will Boom

The Robotics Sector Will Become More Prevalent

Increased Urgency in the Renewable Energy Technology Sector

Blockchain Technology Prevails

 

The things I’ve seen #2

Enjoy things I’ve seen, read and listened to last week…

Is america “normal” again?

Link to lyrics

Full transcript


Education is so important. A lot more than politics… unfortunately in Portugal we are losing this battle… we should focus on deploying a real strategy and less on politics or marketing big plans that are just promises that never see the day of light…

tech at the service of education – a recent McKinsey research

The Edtech opportunity- an article by dealroom


More thoughts about tech trends for 2021… always a good read!

3 tech trends that COVID-19 will accelerate in 2021


Philosophical teaser that I enjoyed

 

and tools that I had a look at…

 


One last (insanely weird) thing… market games that might end really bad sooner or later…

GameStop playing around with its shares

The things I’ve seen

A shortlist of things I read, saw and heard in these last days…

Goodbye and good riddance to 2020! Read about the expected trends for 2021!

Crypto is growing – one trillion and counting

I’ve been using signal (and telegram) for some time now… and now I am less alone

Cloudflare reviewing 2020 with great fashion and a lot of intel 

I finally finished a podcast about superhuman and now I have a dilema… I want to try out it!


A great podcast from the knowledge project, interviewing the CEO of Automatic and one of the fathers of WordPress

Voice enabled tech is a thing to follow – Alexa just announced some cool things

An in-depth great article about Didimo that we invested in at Bright Pixel along side with our friends from Armilar

Top social media monitoring tools

Weforum.org article about remote working

Singapore – a place I have to visit ASAP 

A nice tech crunch article about the Portuguese startup ecosystem

Sizzle.Io – Perhaps a cool and data driven way to promote more sales

Issunboshi – a graphic novel that deserves funding

 

market matters

from CB insights:

Opinions vary quite a bit among both operators & investors, with technology investors tending to have the most divergent (and strongest) opinions.

 

Many investors say they don’t look at TAM for new markets, because it’s often too small or undefined to even be interesting or valuable. In these cases, doing any sort of TAM analysis is actually misleading and will make you overlook opportunities. What was the TAM for something like Airbnb (couch surfing) or Amazon (books) when they started?

 

On the flip side are many investors who view the market as critical and perhaps the top dimension when evaluating a company.

Inside Pixel HoHoHo

Hit me baby one more time!

I don’t know if you remember, but by this time, last year, we launched 20by20. A brilliant (we believe) initiative that gathered several players from the Portuguese entrepreneurial ecosystem to give their vision on what would be the trends for 2020. As you can expect, none of us predicted that the trend would be … well … hell.

Don’t get us wrong. Our guest writers were actually really good predicting the technological trends and the pandemic accelerated the adoption of some of the solutions we’ve all been preaching about for some time now. Let’s take a quick look to the macro topics highlighted last year:

· 5G – it seemed that the new generation of broadband cellular networks was getting in shape in the beginning of the year, but it seems like we will have to wait a bit more while companies and regulators find a deal. Meanwhile, several industries are already preparing their products with software that benefits from this technology (e.g. ultra connected cars), so, we think it’s safe to say that we’re not that far.

· Cybersecurity – definitely a trend, but not a winner. Companies had major difficulties protecting their assets with the transition to home offices. Many still had on-premises servers and had their workers accessing them via VPN. It’s crucial to prevent and people are more aware of that, which led to a hot November for this industry.

· Sustainability – a strong (but no one expected to be this stronger) winner. Airplanes grounded, cars in garages and people consumerism at its minimum level. No one expected this. The planet gained a few days, and so the future generations.

· The gig economy – well… not a good year for it. Let’s skip this.

· Technology at the service of the humans – ding ding ding. Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner! We never saw so many developers, founders, creatives joining forces to create technological solutions to respond to so many different challenges of the societ

So, let’s do it again! Now with a special guest.

As you see, we really liked this concept. So, this year we invited 21 people to set 21 trends for 2021 – introducing 21by21. Excited, yet? First of all, who are they? They are founders, investors, businessmen and women, from different sectors and with different backgrounds. A conclusion that we always find interesting is that, even though we all belong to the same industry, one way or another, all of us have a very personal perspective and that brings value to it.

So, without further ado, the bets for 2021 are on:

·   Sustainability – elected by the second time in a row. No one expects consumer habits to go back to be the same, and people are more severe when choosing brands that show concerns with the environment and a transparent supply chain.

·   Short video will dethrone YouTube – new generations don’t have the same attention span, they don’t need more than a few seconds of video to know the highlights. Let’s see if this is the year of short videos and how influencers and entertainment industries will adapt to that demanding new process.

·   Brain food – mental health is now one of the biggest concerns of people and companies for 2021, and it is expected that more and more consumers will look for products that help them stay focused and fight anxiety, and that more companies will launch products with L-Theanine, caffeine and cannabinoids.

·   Hybrid work – All of us have already experienced the benefits (and challenges) of home office, but organizations are facing some additional adversities in transmitting their culture to their workers, so hybrid methodologies are being highly praised by leaders across industries.

·   Data – 2020 locked us down, so all we had was the internet. Companies collected years-worth of online growth and client & sales data, and they can now use them wisely (if they know how to…).

·   VC investors are hopeful – startups will have a major role in the recovery of economies worldwide and our part as investors is to boost them up. Governmental entities may also find in these private, agile companies a faster way to innovate and solve society’s new challenges.

Last but not the least, we invited a very special guest to participate: AI. GPT-2 wrote a very clear text of what it expects to be the trends for 2021. Curious? We were too.

Read more! and the past editions are also cool!

Thanks to all the participants of this initiative. It couldn’t have been possible without you. Let’s hope we don’t mess up next year too!

Thank you to those who followed our endless thoughts throughout the year. If you want to catch up, you can see what we’ve been talking about here…

March – Investment: “You can do anything. But never go against the family”

April – The unexpected new world

May – The winner takes it all

June – I want damage modeling

July – When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro

August – The bright new days

September – We’re chained

October – The perfect storm

November – Everybody be cool, this is a robbery!

21by21

A great initiative powered by Bright Pixel!

My two cents… Read the rest at https://21by21.brpx.com/

Nobody could phantom that 2020 would end to be one of the weirdest years of our lifetime… so far.

So, it is really hard to accept the challenge to think and write about what 2021 has in store for us.

What I write below is based on three underlying premises:
First, that the future is mostly already here.
Second, that we can all desire that next year will be hopefully a return to “normalcy”… but it’s highly likely it won’t. The world will not be the same no more.
Third, we are all suffering and just grasping from the fact that the pace of change has dramatically increased and changed gears… right in front of us. We need to hold on… for the ride.

In 2020, we had to change how we live and all thought it would be just temporary… but, next year will we have still to adapt.
In several ways, I think we fast forwarded several trends that were already creeping around us.

In 2021, we will undoubtedly have to tackle several challenges ahead of us… and there is one thing I take for granted: our lives, for the better and for the worst, will become even more digital.
Namely, due to rising environmental concerns, health related issues, generational shifts and out of sheer and practical necessity… companies and people will do a lot more things in a digital realm.

Work, play, buy, sell, watch, share, collaborate, monitor and control – everything, increasingly online.

Finally, due to my role as an early stage investor, I have to try to have a stance on what might or not be a trend going forward.
For what it’s worth, here go my two cents about several key trends I believe will be picking up even more pace in the near future:

In the B2C world: digital entertainment is on the rise; online gaming and esports are becoming massive; we cannot keep up with pace of the vast array of sharing platforms that cater several niche interests; the way we buy everything is changing, and therefore, e-commerce is in constant flux; sustainability and environmentally driven decisions will impact more and more our daily actions – what we eat, wear, live and how we travel or commute; finally, above all, I feel that people are also a lot more focused on their physical and mental health and overall well-being…
(and all of this will be more and more mobile centric… simply because the zombie-like-neck-down human condition is here to stay, with everybody looking at a glowing device firmly held by one of our hands, whilst we walk pass everything around us…)

In the B2B world: “remotely-more, physically-less” working environments are here to stay; therefore, distributed cloud solutions to flexibly manage everything work process we have in our companies are on the rise; collaborative tools we be in also dire need; so will be cyber security products and services to protect ourselves and our assets from increased vulnerabilities and risks that we will all face; technology to handle contactless or unattended human interactions in customer facing services will be sought for in higher demand; hyper automation and extracting intelligence and decision making from the ever-increasing volume of accessible data is for sure an unstoppable trend.
Trends apart, on a ending positive note, 2021 will simply be what we will individually and collectively make of it!
“Every moment has to be complete in and of itself” (from Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness)