Original Source: http://bit.ly/1WqVQgd
Accel Partners blog on Medium.com
A fascination with a technology-driven future
There are a lot of big and compelling ideas that fascinate us. For example:
- The march towards a quantified, autonomous future continues thanks to the confluence of predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision technologies. These areas will continue to revolutionize how businesses figure out the best way to serve the needs of their customers. It will give people access to all sorts of intelligent machines too. DJI’s high-performance, easy-to-use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have introduced a growing ecosystem of applications with use cases across a range of industries. Meanwhile, Google and Tesla have shown autonomous cars are very, very real.
- The social graph continues to reorient how people interact. We’ve long believed in the Facebook-led narrative that change and opportunity come from expansive social networks. We see this through companies like GoFundMe, which in 2015 reached a $1 billion milestone of crowdfunded donations, or in Spotify and its use of the social graph to power a global music community.
- Facebook’s human-centered approach has also inspired how enterprise-grade tools change the way businesses collaborate, communicate and innovate. Platforms like Slack, InVision and HipChat are resetting expectations for workplace software.
- Similarly, open source software has inspired a rethinking of the technology engine in the enterprise — 31 billion lines of code are now committed to open projects (think of the code powering all of Google’s services, and then increase it 15x).
- And we believe that we’re in the golden age of video as consumers demand new and faster ways — from professionals and amateurs alike — to fill their appetite for mobile content (powered by new mobile broadband video capabilities).
- It’s still early but augmented/virtual reality experiences from Oculusand others hint at a future where video evolves into something immersive and interactive. The long-term impact on how we do things and experience things is profound and far-reaching.
- The APX Economy is our description of a trend where once-burdensome business processes are now being reduced down to third-party APIs.Fast-growing companies can now outsource non-core capabilities like payment systems (Braintree), analytics (Segment), search (Algolia) and background checks (Checkr) via a few lines of code to streamline their operations.
- And as we learned at our CIO Summit earlier this year, hardening security was top-of-mind and will remain a focus in 2016. CIOs need new systems and processes in a world where we’re constantly defending against new threats and neutralizing those that have already breached our systems.
- People have more opportunity to capitalize on their talents wherever they are. It’s well understood that thanks to cloud services, internet commerce and viral marketing, entrepreneurs have the means to build disruptive companies from just about anywhere — like New York City, Bangalore, London and Helsinki. What’s less understood is how the rise of the “on-demand economy” will continue to push how people think about the notion of employment. Will people have greater and greater freedom to decide how to best capitalize on their time and talents? It’s something we’ll continue to track with interest.
