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What is the single most major disruptive technology, ie, Revolution Investment theme, that will make people rich over the next decade?
Miniature, democratized computer development market. Hmm, I need a better nomenclature than that. How about “Mini Me Computing”.
In a quiet but world-changing way, we’re returning to the old days of the early PC development, where geniuses in their garages (or more likely in this economy, in their parents’ basements) are developing new computers with cheap materials and standards that will result in an entirely new economy in ten years from now.
The coming Google Glass and the much-rumored Apple iWatch are just the first iterations of wearable computing that will soon be everywhere. And just as the Android/iOS operating systems and the smartphones/tablets they’ve been shipping in have served as platforms for app companies to boom, so too will these new form factors provide yet another new Revolutionary platform for a whole new generation of app and gadget companies to boom.
One glaring example of this soon-to-be-burgeoning trend is the Raspberry Pi. From their FAQ page (http://www.raspberrypi.org/faqs), “The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video.”
I just recently ordered myself one of these little computers for less than $50 on Amazon and I’ve been studying how to use all the extra, old monitors, disk drives and computer accessories that I have gathered over the last couple decades. Individuals and start-up companies are using the Raspberry Pi platform with either a Linux or an Android operating system to develop their own gadgets, robots and software. This is as disruptive a technology as we’ll ever see. In five years, these Raspberry Pi and other tiny computers will get even cheaper and the technologies built on top of them even more innovative.
And this leads me to the single biggest advantage that Google’s Android has here. The Android operating system is providing a platform for literally thousands of companies around the world who are developing new gadgets, (Android gaming devices for home and road for example), concepts (Android in your car dashboard, for example), and potential “meta” platforms that others then can build on top of (chip makers who are developing chips specialized for Android, for example).
You can’t run iOS or Windows on Raspberry Pi, because they ain’t open-source. The sunk costs of hardware and components to make a PC have always been prohibitive to most of the population. And while Microsoft’s market share dominance and positive feedback loop of having market share dominance helping to keep it dominant, open source operating systems just never caught on in the PC world. But these $20 (and soon to be <$10) computers that you can hold in the palm of your hand are obviously disruptive in their pricing. In fact, I think trying to get in front of the cheap computer, wearable/wild-form-factor juggernaut that is just about to hit is probably a lot like the advice I was giving in 2007-2010 of getting in front of the smartphone/tablet app juggernaut. It's a brand new market and you can become one of the first movers into it. Think about whatever skill set and experiences you have and figure out how to apply that to the wearable/wild-form-factor market that is soon to be here and you'll likely make more money doing that than you ever will by investing in stock in a company after they've already come public. That said, I think you can tell which stock is the clearest way to play this trend for now - Google. I don't like to chase stocks at their all-time highs, and I've been long Google since its IPO. Furthermore, this is a long-term trend that will take several more years before the markets and the mainstream media starts to notice it. And over the next couple years, we'll likely see some more companies figure out how to get in front of the Mini Me Computing boom and we'll have some huge opportunities to invest in those stocks before the rest of the world figures it out.
