What will be the next Wave?

For the last two decades start ups funded by Venture Capital from pension assets have ushered in technology revolutions bringing web technologies and web based applications and businesses remaking the way people conduct their lives, allowing people to connect, and making products never available before available, changing and improving our lives.

Now however, the pension money available to start ups is diminished, the web could replace the whole genre, the need for new technology is less interesting and new needs now exist.

Will the Web 2.0 corporation be some amorphous group from the web without "employees". OpenSource is developing software why not the next utility company or automobile? Or perhaps it could be from the banking, lending space, obvious is that fact that the segment is facing turbulent times, excessive salaries (indicating there is room for competition), and it is an electronic industry. Could corporate finance and governance (and transparency) be created by the web?

We have the tools to do some wonderful things available to us now. There are certain human activities that are hard to fathom being done over the web... for example, the assembly of a car, or farming corn in Iowa but in a world where global warming, shortages of oil and water, and the existence of natural disasters (hurricanes, earth quakes, and fires) there must be industries ripe the disruptive implementation of technology to change the dynamics.

Insurance (where 50% of the cost is administrative and 50% is actual insurance)
Finance and banking (where the spread in lending and savings rate is 40%
Retail (where Wal-Mart has a sophisticated CRM/ERP/MRP system) small retailers do not benefit from being able to break down economic order sizes. (but Amazon could).
Traffic patterns - why aren't automobiles connected to the a network and hybrid vehicles start and shut off engines to minimize fuel use.
Public investment in energy, infrastructure, NG fuel systems.

Business Ideas

Retrofit Hybred

• Focus on the top two platforms
• Ford F150 and Chevy/GMC 1500 drive trains
• Will incompass Tahoe, Suburbans, pickups, Expedition.... the vehicles with the worst economy, and to the extent it is stay at home soccer moms, the driving is primarily city where the Hybrid advantage is the best.
• Plus the resale on these vehicles is in the dumper... say $5000/vehicle... thus if the retrofit can be done for $5000, and the owner keeps the vehicle they in essence have not had to incur any ecomonic cost for the retrofit. Economically it is free.
  
• What is involved: Transmission replacement, ECU replacement, batteries.

Network cars

• Network knowledge of traffic flows and signal timings can optimize flows and provide driver feedback
• Vehicle can track routes, which are uploaded into Driver Optization Analysis software the teachs drivers how to optimize, based on histoisis, other people on same route etc.
  
• Primary change will be driver habit on braking and acceleration, and engine shut off if traffic light is expected to change to stop... ie. No need to use gas if the light will change to red before you get there. Coast down now, allow speed to drop earlier, do not use any gas, and come to a speed now that will maximize the speed when the driver gets to the light. It is better to be going 18 miles an hour when you get to the light, and to brake and stop at the light and have to start from 0.

Network the home

• Need gateway in the home that can commuicate to a host that provides information on power cost, energy efficiency, environmental greeness.
  
• The power company can either charge different rates, or require customers to use the system to get a lower rate, or offer it simply to get people that are conciouness to participate.
• Idea is the shift significant power uses to the most efficient power generating periods
• There would be a few points in the household that would target
  
• Power outlet to recharging the electric car
• Pool motors
• Electic water and air heaters
• Dishwashers
• Would run as a service on a linux or windows machine and would run a server that would push instructions to the devices in the home over wireless or X10 protocols. Thus there is a server in the sky that the utility feeds. There would be software that would run on a Windows or Linux / Mac machine (Home Server) that connects to that server an communicates to the other devices, and there are hardware devices with switches that are remotely controled by the computer. (Smart Power Sockets).

NG Retrofit

• Retrofit of vehicles to NG
• For public vehicles there would be a lease option on the retrofit to allow municple budgets to easily accomodate the change. ie, cost of lease will be paid by the reduction in fuel cost and the tax benefit will be utilizable by the leasor.

Payment Processor

• Like PayTrust where bills get sent to PayTrust, are scanned, key data entered and an email sent to the subscriber to review, modify, but pre approved payments are made automatically.
• This would be modified to take advantage of the iPhone. The bill could be viewed, trends on the amount viewed, useage of utilities graphed,
  
• Would tie to Quicken like budget with amounts from credit cards, bank statement viewed which can be gestered to the correct column, eg budget, day, etc.
  
• Would have a tie in to expense report processign system, similar to EVS, with policies defined by the employer which would tie into a pre approval system, online policies for employees, portals for access via an intranet and internet.
• To be truely successful as a business expense service direct ties to AMEX data feed would help, eg. card swipe in taxi would show up on the phone as a transaction within a few seconds and could be slotted into the correct category, day, project, purpose... all unprocessed items would sit in an "inbox" to be moved to the correct category.
  
• AMEX would love the app since it eases the user processing encouraging more payments by credit card, increasing their transaction and fee volume.
• The system would be able to track the category the user generally uses for a payment and will suggest that category.
• They system would also be able to reconcile to the monthly cc billing to assure all activity has be addressed easing the employee's reconciliation effort.

Entrepreneurship Center

• Office space
• Law firm
• Bookkepper
• Server/IT/Telecom
• Conditioned and back up power
  
• Hardware Team
• SME on key tools
• Board Rooms/Training Rooms

Junk Processing

• Junk sorter
• Reclaim electronics
• Batteries
• metals

the car to come

An observation: While driving I am either listening to the radio or talking on the phone. Furthermore, the car is the only place I actually listen to the radio and is the place I do most of my music listening. And by the looks of things when I see what other drivers are doing, I would say I am part of the majority.

Shouldn't the XM radio listing be shown on the NAV screen,
Visual Voice Mail
Satellite images
Weather report
Sports scores
Bills to pay
Alarm system on and off control
Updates to the maps

Nav should record where you have been, along with fuel economy, then provide feed back on driving habits to improve economy

Shouldn't the iPhone or Touch be built into the nav system… i.e.… the Touch would sync with iTunes over 802.11 when the car is running and all the content, etc. would be available in the car… which btw is the locale where most humans with cars listen to music (except when they are at their computer).

The car needs to be networked. This would be good for the car companies, carriers, consumer, and cell phone industry. Add another account to my bill... and charge me another $10 a month, plus some coin for each application.

Investment Ideas

Energy
Oil dependence is a huge issue. At the same time energy use will contine to rise for use with data centers. Solar and wind can help hugely. Plus rails if they can improve their point to point delivery. Big issue of course is oil for transport. Boone Pickens believes oil will fall to $85 in Q2 before raising. Is there a way to short via a fund?? Data Centers are huge power users, and growing. Servers use power and turn it into heat that has to be removed. And the mega trends are to make more processing in data centers and less at the end points.. particularly mobile endpoints.... with SaaS, collaboration, content access with consistent experience. etc.

I still don't understand why there is not a car that is built for efficiency. A car needs something like 75 HP to go 70MPH, so make a car with a 100HP motor, and provide acceleration with a battery. It should be intelligent, knowing in advance based on GPS where you are going and knowing when to start the engine, based on where you are headed and its battery level.