Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist

Rocketbuilder's new Ready to Rocket 25 list has been released. This is the best of the best of the emerging technology companies from Vancouver and across B.C.

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 12 Jan 2006 06:00:00 -0800

I attended the Ready to Rocket 2006 session this morning, which was sponsored by Rocketbuilders , a Vancouver based market strategy and consulting firm that helps technology companies capitalize on market opportunities.

The presentation started with an overview of the successes from 2005. Next, Geoff Hansen presented an IT Outlook for 2006. This was followed by the Ready to Rocket 25 for 2006 and the "Ones to watch" - 40 emerging companies that might graduate to the full "Ready to Rocket" Top 25 in 2007. Along with those lists, Price-Waterhouse Coopers presented an overview of the M&A and IPO activity across North America for 2005, and Bill Koty, a professor from UBC presented a brief overview of a newly released Premier's Technology Council report titled "Ahead of the Future" which gives a series of scenarios and predictions for B.C.'s technology economy development from 2005-2020. The summary notes are below along with some of my opinion at the bottom.

NASA should be in BC - we launched a lot of rockets last year.

Some interesting notes came from this session:

2005 was a breakthrough year on the Rocketbuilders list.
These companies were successful because they had a laser focus on a niche market.
Key highlights of the 2005 list include:

PureEdge Solutions Inc. (Victoria, BC) was acquired by IBM
Over 45% of the 2005 Ready to Rocket companies received new investments
100% of the 2005 Ready to Rocket companies exceeded 30% revenue growth
Over 60% of 2005 Ready to Rocket companies exceeded 100% revenue growth
Over 35% of 2005 Ready to Rocket companies exceeded 200% revenue growth

2006 - the rise of the phoenix

Here were some of the highlights of the predictions for the year ahead;

general projections seem to predicting that companies will increase their IT spending 5-6% across the board this year
SMB spending is double that and includes factoring in old hardware replacement cycles for hardware purchased before the collapse.
there is a trend away from cost-cutting measures and back to the value creation side in terms of prioritizing projects.
Key Themes that have been identified for 2006:

Choice: give the user what they want, where they want, in the form they want (Tivo, xFM)
Make it easy: make it simple to learn and use
Safe & Secure: ensure that they can store their data safely and people will trust you with that data
Search is king: there is a lot of work to do here
Microsoft Office enablement: now that Microsoft has opened up the APIs, companies are succeeding by building things that integrate into Microsoft Office, even more than they were before.
Storage is still hot: Networked attached storage companies (for example) are growing at up to 300%/yr
Make it portable: give people the ability to stay mobile: Blackberries, iPods, xFM
Ensure compliance: people are going to spend 30% of their IT budgets on compliance

For more information on the 2006 IT Outlook, contact Geoff Hansen at Rocketbuilders at 866-824-8785 or at gchansen@rocketbuilders.com.

Ready to Rocket 25 2006 list

Some interesting notes came from this session:

For the 2006 list, the selection team had great difficulty keeping it DOWN to 25, which meant that the Ones to Watch list expanded to 40 companies.
There were so many interesting technologies coming up that Rocketbuilders considered launching an "Interesting Concepts" category...but didn't
Success factors. The Top 25 shared some key success factors:
they were heavily verticalized (we had 5 Financial service companies and 4 Healthcare companies on the list.)
they were well-funded to grow
Some of these companies are approaching $5 - 10M in revenues - a point at which they become a LOT more interesting as acquisition targets.

Here is the direct link to the Ready to Rocket 25 List. But they are here for review as well:

Abebooks
AirG Inc.
Axonwave Software Inc.
Bycast Inc.
Caelo Software Inc.
Colligo Networks Inc.
Convedia Corporation
Eyeball Networks Inc.
FinancialCAD Corporation
Flowfinity Wireless Inc

GaleForce Solutions Inc.
GenoLogics Life Science Software Inc.
IronPoint Technology Inc.
In Motion Technology Inc.
Layer 7 Technology inc.
MAKE Technologies Inc.
NewHeights Software Corp.
ResponseTek Networks Corp.
RewardStream Inc.
Sxip Identity Corporation

Tantalus Systems Corp.
TAP Solutions Inc.
TenDigits Software Inc.
Vision Critical Inc.
Vivonet Inc.

The Ones to Watch

This list was presented but the final list will not be out until January 13th, 2006.

Lane construction finally complete - traffic now moving slowly towards IPO exit lane

In this 2005 review of M&A and IPO activity across North America presented by Randy Garg of Price-Waterhouse Coopers , there were quite a few interesting tidbits:

The IPO market has finally been resurrected.
$100B of private equity was present in 2005.
Private equity funds are becoming more active in M&A (25% of $100B or 25B) which is a new development.
Local companies are going public...but not necessarily on the TSX. Some have gone to London or to the USA. This is a new development.
Debt and subordinated debt as financial instruments have started to appear and this is a new development which is being enabled by the fact that newer companies have (gasp) revenues that can support the debt and are more financially solid and lendable from a cash-flow perspective.
Public companies are going private again in order to lower their costs, and simplify their operations because the costs of compliance are huge (up to 30% of IT spending per above notes, not to mention other back-office charges.)
Rule of Thumb: if you're looking to get acquired, make sure that you have audited financials
BC and Canadian companies are now on the U.S. radar but our prices have gone up and our currency has gone up, leaving us as less of a bargain than before.
The major M&A deals are still predominantly cross-border - U.S. companies buying Canadian ones or vice versa. There was very little activity in Canada between Canadian entities.
M&A is still a revenue purchase decision for companies. They are buying revenues, not necessarily technologies. Once a company crosses the revenue barrier, there are a LOT more suitors.
$5M seems to be a baseline deal size.
2006 is poised to be the best year yet for M&A activity!
There is a ton of money out there - $100B raised in the U.S. in the Private equity markets in 2005
therefore money is not the problem
finding good deals and good teams are the problem
M&A is still the preferred route of exit when compared to IPO, but IPOs are now back as options.

I'd like a micro fuel-cell powered proteomics machine for gene therapy web research

William Koty of UBC presented some of the findings from the Premier's Technology Council report on Emerging Technologies titled "Ahead of the Future". It evaluated 39 emerging technologies, boiled those down to a short-short-list of 12 Emerging technologies and then presented two almost contradictory charts - one from the academics and one from the industry advisory board. It was long on research methodology and somewhat short on conclusions.

I am hoping that they will do a follow-on or that it will feed into a larger discussion where they do indeed flesh out the scenarios that they discuss very tentatively in the report.

At the end of the day, what did they really say?

If I had to summarize the session, I would say it like this:

The tech industry is ramping up again. A lot of people had that gut sense but the numbers now prove it.
We are building some really kick-ass companies here in B.C.
Those companies are growing again.
M&A activity will be at an all time high in 2006 and the IPO markets are opening up again as exit routes.

"Your playing small doesn't serve the world"

We build good companies here that are very capital efficient and that are still attractively priced for acquisition. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It brings money into the economy, it gives local entrepreneurs access to global acquisitors' systems and training and talent, and spawns more entrepreneurial ventures. A year or two ago, one of the local entrepreneurs hosted a VEF event titled something like: "Why acquisitions are gutting B.C.'s economy." The resulting talk though had every one of the entrepreneurs on the panel saying that their acquisition was a good thing and that in fact it had had a net positive benefit across the board on a bunch of different things. I remember the host lamenting at the end that he should have talked to the panel BEFORE naming the talk.

Another key point was that we are finally starting to grow our companies again to a decent size We need to keep thinking bigger. Even the statement that they are growing to a decent size is deceiving since we are referring to companies approaching $10M/yr in revenues, which is laughable in the U.S. But it's a starting point. If you are an entrepreneur, don't say, "We're going to dominate the lower mainland", say "We're going to dominate the western world" or the whole world for that matter.

I am always reminded of the quote that was incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela but which was actually written by Marianne Williamson in her 1992 book, "Return to Love":

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of god - your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of god that is within us. It is not in just some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

B.C. entrepreneurs would do well to think about that and learn from it. Our playing small doesn't serve the world. So get out there, think big, and serve the world.

Thanks to the good people at Rocketbuilders for the invitation and for all the hard work in putting this together!

Book Review: "Live Long Enough to Live Forever" by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, M.D.

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:00:00 -0700

If you haven't checked it out yet, check out "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough To Live Forever" by Ray Kurzweil. It's his newest book. The premise is that there are three bridges to get us to a nearly unlimited life span. The first is using what we already know. The second bridge is using biotechnology that does not yet exist. The third is nanotech to allow us to directly connect our biology to other technologies.

I'm just starting on it but I love all of his books and this one is already awesome and I'm only on page 19!

The ideas build heavily on Ray Kurzweil's work on the double exponential technology growth rate and singularity theory.

"Ray has spent several decades studyingand modeling technology trends and their impact on society. Perhaps his most profound observation is that the rate of change is itself accelerating. This means that the past is not a reliable guide to the futre. The 20th century was not 100 years of progress at today's rate but, rather, was equivalent to about 20 years, because we've been speeding up to current rates of change. And we'll make another 20 years of progress at today's rate, equivalent to that of the entire 20th centure, in the next 14 years. And then we'll do it again in just 7 years. Because of this [double] exponential growth, the 21st century will equal 20,000 years of progress at today's rate of progress -- 1,000 times greater than what we witnessed in the 20th century, which itself was no slouch for change."

Dilbert of the day - nanotech stem cells for fighting terrorists - sounds like something that could get great VC funding!

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 08:41:00 -0800

Farming for gold: Using plant crops to remediate soil, remove contaminants, harvest gold, and keep ex-miners employed (UPDATED)

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 24 Oct 2004 11:47:00 -0700

I love stories like this one at the Christian Science Monitor about Chris Anderson, a New Zealand scientist using crops to clean up contaminated mines. (Thanks Z+Partners for the link.)

In one fell swoop, he has come up with a process to improve the environment (both by having plants around and by having the plants decontaminate the soil), make money (enough to pay for the process AND make a profit), and also keep small artisan miners in business, although now they are watching over crops instead of pouring chemicals into the old mines.

UPDATE: Closer to home, Matt brought my attention to a successful joint effort between Teck-Cominco, Western Bioresources Consulting, and Celgar Pulp Mill. Thanks Matt!

These are great examples of triple-bottom-line thinking.

Massive Change - the future of global design

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:32:00 -0700

This is an extremely long post on Massive Change, the multi-media exhibition that is intended to be the starting point for a global discussion on the role of design in creating our world. Here is a bit from their website that gives you a sense of the goals of the project.

My favourite author Ray Kurzweil talks about living to 120 years old, human/computer integration, and nano-medicine

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 00:51:00 -0700

I love Ray Kurzweil. Here is a short but interesting interview from CIO magazine where Kurzweil predicts things that will sound outlandish to most people:

• outsourcing is a good thing and in the bigger picture not an issue because it's not a zero-sum game - he gives a 200 year view of these similar trends;
• China is committed to building 50 MIT equivalent institutions;
• their move towards generating intellectual property may result in them actually caring about same;
• computer technology will disperse and become ubiquitous - routers, desktop computers and servers will disappear - [I have a hard time with the server part.]
• IT departments will become Information Departments, focused on privacy, data protection, and security against pathogens;
• humans and machines will merge through the application of nano-machinery and nano-computing intelligence added into the body and brain;
• culture shock won't happen because of the boiling frog theory (my paraphrase);
• biotech is just beginning [I agree, we're only 36 years into what may well be another standard 80-100 year technology cycle.]
• we currently have the means through diet and supplementation (he takes 250 supplements per day) to slow down aging such that the person can still be around to take advantage of biotech discoveries that will allow them to rebuild their bodies and brains in order to live a longer life;

I love Ray Kurzweil because his interviews and writings are always so completely outrageous to most people.

And my favourite quote of all was when the interviewer, in response to the augmented intelligence comments, asked him, "Aren't you smart enough already?"

Ray replied:

QUOTE

"Absolutely not. Are you kidding? A major focus of my interest is in tracking technology trends, which requires me to get my intellectual arms around a lot of diverse fields. It's really an opposite activity to what a lot of scientists do, which is to become more and more narrow. So I'm a neophyte in just about every field I run across."

UNQUOTE

I love this because I relate! I am interested in so many fields that I find it difficult to specialize and deepen my skillset in any one of them.

Good article on the horizontal nature of nanotech and why it really will matter to almost every industry

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 07:48:00 -0700

I am in the camp of people who think that nanotech will not be a "market" but that it will influence all other existing markets instead. Sure, there will be a market for nano-tech tools but even those will be broken out into vertical market toolsets and technologies so textile manufacturers will not be buying the same tools as tire manufacturers (or at least they likely won't).

This is a very good article which articulates a wide range of industries that will be affected by nanotech developments. The message is essentially that it will be everywhere, it will be very disruptive (in the economic sense), and it will be hyped to the point that one will need to invest carefully. Overall, an excellent article.

Wealthy 92 year old philanthropist Marty Silverman builds nanotech biotech research center in Albany

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 07:08:00 -0700

Here is yet another example of the nano-bio convergence that is happening, although this time it is the disciplines themselves physically converging in a new research facility. This can only help accelerate the interesting developments between the two sciences.

Finally...Some nanotech that makes sense...odor-killing socks

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 13:58:00 -0700

Sure it would be nice to have a googlebajillion MIP processor or some nano-opto-electronics to speed up your internet connection or a petabyte of storage on your keychain fob but these people are working on something that REALLY matters: odor-killing socks.

U.S. National Cancer Institute announces 5 year nano-medicine funding plan

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 07:22:00 -0700

Here is a Reuters article on the National Cancer Institute's new $145M USD nano-medicine funding plan.

$10 robot that can walk on water and that looks like a bug

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 10 Sep 2004 08:23:00 -0700

How cool is this? Metin Sitti, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon's Nano-Robotics lab has built a robot patterned on water striders, that can walk - not float - on water and that can propel itself forward the same way that water striders do. The "bug" contains about $10 worth of material.

Mike Crissey, writer for Associated press wrote:

QUOTE
Although it's only a basic prototype, Sitti and other researchers imagine that his water-skimming robot could be used on any still water. With a chemical sensor, it could monitor water supplies for contamination or other toxins; with a camera it could be a spy or an explorer; with a net or a boom, it could skim contaminants off the top of water.

UNQUOTE

Steve Jurvetson has joined the blogosphere...and get ready for 100 years of change in the next 20 years

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 09 Sep 2004 17:24:00 -0700

I am thrilled to see Steve Jurvetson of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, one of the premier Valley VC firms, has launched his own blog.

One of his recent posts discusses the very ideas that I mentioned in my blog-defining first post - namely that the next 20 years (2005-2025) will bring the same amount of change that we saw in the past 100 years (1900-2000). Seems hard to believe but that is the problem with exponentials. They creep up on you when they hit the curve.

If you don't know Steve or his interests in nano-technology and accelerating technologies, I recommend reading this for a while.

Steve writes:

QUOTE

For most of us, who do not recall what life was like one hundred years ago, the metaphor is a bit abstract. So I did a little research. In 1900, in the U.S., there were only 144 miles of paved road, and most Americans (94%+) were born at home, without a telephone, and never graduated high school. Most (86%+) did not have a bathtub at home or reliable access to electricity. Consider how much technology-driven change has compounded over the past century, and consider that an equivalent amount of progress will occur in one human generation, by 2020. It boggles the mind, until one dwells on genetics, nanotechnology, and their intersection.

Exponential progress perpetually pierces the linear presumptions of our intuition. “Future Shock” is no longer on an inter-generational time-scale. How will society absorb an accelerating pace of externalized change? What does it mean for our education systems, career paths, and forecast horizons?

UNQUOTE

Steve Jurvetson echoes MY sentiments of yesterday: Nanotech will learn from nature and provide us with incredible new technologies

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:37:00 -0700

Similar to my post yesterday on swarming algorithms, Steve Jurvetson, head of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, also believes in the wealth of knowledge that we have yet to tap simply by exploring nature's many inventions. Nice to see he agrees with me!! I'm kidding of course. The area of bio-mimetics has been discussed for quite some time. However, now we are hearing a lot about the next step - bio-nano convergence - using biological creatures to create nano structures. We live in fascinating times.

Buzzword of the month: Renewable energy

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 16 Aug 2004 13:36:00 -0700

It's Deja vu all over again. Renewable energy seems to be the topic of the day.

Some odd combination of forces are driving interest in renewable energies (many of the things that I discussed in my previous posting on bioproducts).

The web is cluttered with noise about bioproducts, solar energy, and other non-petroleum based energy sources.

Here is an article from SiliconValley.com discussing how VCs are now funding solar companies that they would not touch previously.

I like this article for several reasons:

Nanotech driving down solar costs: it talks about how solar power really needs to be a quantum leap more efficient before it will be widely useable, and how this may be achieved with nano-scale means. I would add that there may be some biological alternatives on the horizon as well if Craig Venter's Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives manages to develop anything from their research.

It also quotes Sunil Paul, founder of Brightmail commenting that go "beyond just making money" - a favourite topic of mine.

I wrote a research paper back at UVic on Alternative energy sources, and had as my instructor, Dr. Fred Knelman, a major thorn in the side of the global nuclear establishment. I learned a lot from him and from that class. The biggest thing I learned was that renewable and non-petroleum, non-coal power was only capable of creating 5% of the global power that was required (and that was ten years ago). I probably have that number wrong but the point was that the energy density of these alternatives was not very high in comparison to oil, coal, and nuclear. And that was one of the primary reasons that they had not gone anywhere. The costs were relatively exorbitant to create the same amount of power. Until the economics become reasonable, there still exists very little reason for the global energy economy to shift dramatically.

I am looking forward to getting back into reading about these technologies to see what the past ten years has brought us and what new biotechnologies and nanotechnologies may yet bring us in this field.

NanoBioInfo tech convergence: Growing semiconductors and nano-wires

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 09 Aug 2004 09:59:00 -0700

Palo-Alto based Cambrios, Inc. is developing new methods for using biological material to create inorganic metallic semiconductors and nano-wires. Just more evidence of the coming NBIC (Nano, Bio, Info, Cognitive) convergence.

Richard Smalley's proposal: 5 cents from every gallon of fossil fuel = $10B towards nano-tech and grid power to serve our future power requirements

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 08:27:00 -0700

Richard Smalley recently testified to the U.S. Senate on how how nanotechnologies and distributed power grids are the future of power.

Advice to kids starting their careers: Go west young man (woman) and look for nanotech and biotech

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 11:09:00 -0700

Here are some quotes that Jeff Harrow of The Harrow Group found:

"If I were just setting out today to make that drive to the West Coast to start a new business, I would be looking at biotechnology and nanotechnology."

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com
From the May 14, 2004 Nanotech Insider
http://www.forbesinc.com/newsletters/nanotech/

--

Michael Dell [answered] "nanotechnology," when asked by an MIT student which areas he'd focus on if he had to start his career today, all over again.
From the May 14, 2004 Nanotech Insider

Another good addition may be: "Look at both, since they will likely converge in NBIC applications within a few years. NBIC stands for Nano, Bio, Info, and Cognitive Sciences - the intersection of nano-scale, life sciences, info science (for tracking what's happening), and cognitive sciences (for building smart systems.)

Nanospeheres: 100% success-rate non-invasive cancer killing nanobits

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 11:00:00 -0700

From one of my favourite newsletters, The Harrow Group Technology Report, comes this article on nanospheres, tiny little bits of material that were used in an amazingly successful cancer killing experiment:

As published in pages 171 - 176 of Issue 2 of the June 25 Cancer Letters (an abstract is freely available while the full text requires a subscription), and summarized in a June 21, 2004 Rice University press release, the researchers created silica spheres 20-times smaller than a blood cell and then added a surface layer of gold. One characteristic of these spheres is that, depending on their size and the ratio of silica to gold, they can be "tuned" to respond to particular wavelengths of light. In this case they're sensitive to near-infrared light, which passes through normal tissue without hindrance and without causing damage.

Once injected into the veins of test mice that all had significant cancer tumors, the researchers waited six hours for the nanospheres to circulate through the body. Because of a characteristic of cancer tumors, that their internal blood vessels are poorly formed and tend to leak fluid into the surrounding tissue (the tumor), the gold nanospheres tended to collect within the tumors. Then, the researchers applied a near-infrared laser to the skin over the tumor areas. Although the healthy tissue was not affected, the nanospheres became quite hot as they absorbed the near-infrared light, raising the temperature in the tumor tissue by "around 50-degrees C". And the tumors were destroyed. (When the laser was applied to areas that did not have nanosphere-holding tumors below them, there was virtually no temperature change.)

Within ten days, the nanosphere-treated group of mice was cancer-free and continued to live a normal lifespan!

On the other hand, the tumors in two control groups (one receiving only saline injections plus the near-infrared light, and another group receiving no treatment), continued to grow "rapidly," causing the mice in these two groups to die in 10 to 12 days respectively.

Big Questions, Long Views, and the Intersection of Technology and Society (UPDATED Oct 30/05)

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 06 May 2004 00:44:00 -0700

The Universe is 14 billion years old and will either either re-collapse into itself, expand into a completely diluted state, or rip apart in its 36th billion year in a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies and planets will be torn asunder in a fraction of a second. How do we manage the polarity inherent in knowing that our influence on the universe at that scale is essentially zero balanced against the fact that here in our own very small sphere of influence, we can have an effect on things around us that only exist in this little slice of time?

The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. 2 billion years ago, our first ancestors were microbes. It took 1.5 billion years before those microbes turned into something resembing fish, another 400m years for those fish to turn into mice-like creatures, another 90m years for those mice to evolve to apes, 9 m years for the apes to turn into proto humans and then we evolved from there. No matter what religion you are, you have to look at that in awe and wonder.

Now for the bad news. The sun in our solar system is expanding and it is expected that it will eventually absorb Mercury, Venus, and Earth, causing life here to only last for another half billion years. I am pretty sure that the last life forms left will be single-celled bacterium, cockroaches, and spammers. So the window of opportunity for life to develop here and then migrate throughout the rest of the solar system and Universe is about a billion years. Given that we didn't invent space travel until the first half billion were over, that window is now a half billion to get off the planet and out into the Universe. Given that we only have another half a billion years, shouldn't we all just get along, enjoy the sunset while it's that far away, and figure out how to get the hell off this planet? Of course, while we're here, we should do as much mountain biking, trail-running, paddling, travelling and exploring as we can.

By the time the Earth has hit 8 billion years, long after we are gone, the oceans will have vaporised and at the 12 billion year mark, Earth will have folded entirely into the sun. If the planet is going to be gone, does that mean I think that we should use up the precious natural resources pollute our biosphere while we are here? Of course not, that would be asinine and short-sighted. But then again, humans are not the best at extending their time-scales, nor at empathizing enough with future generations. Although that does seem to be changing in some small but important ways with the spread of the sustainable development movement. I may be a bit of an odd realist/pragmatist in the sustainability movement in that I'm not sure I believe in the implicit value of resources, plants, and animals on earth for their own sake. If they're all going to be gone anyway, that seems moot. But since these things took tens and hundreds of millions of years to develop, I do believe that we should learn from them (biology), design things based on them (biomimicry and nanotechnology), be efficient in our use of them so that we do not mortgage our children's future (sustainability), and learn how to build efficient systems so that we can spread out into the universe and live in harsher, resource constrained regions as we do so.

Of course, we're not good at passing along our knowledge on long time lines, and we're quite adaptable in the moment so maybe it is just the way of our species that we will consume all available resources where ever we go but that we will conserve it when we are pressed to do so. Sort of future-blind, but highly adaptable, with very little long-term memory. Which leads me to think that maybe Mr. Kurzweil's great leap forward really will be the best way for our species to spread itself.

Ray Kurzweil has calculated that by 2040, we will hit the inflection point of the technology development curve of mankind, known as the Singularity , an event horizon beyond which we can not possibly see with our tiny little massively parallel chemical-processing brains. By around 2040, $1000USD of computing power will be the equivalent of all human brain processing capacity on the earth combined (about 12 billion brains worth). He posits that in order for the technology development curve to be maintained, our inefficient genetic mutations will not be able to keep up, meaning that humans will essentially pass the "smart creature" torch to the robots and computers which will have the same brain processing capacity as us, but with MUCH faster substrate (silicon or otherwise, raher than our slow massively parallel chemical brains).

What is really great about this is that in a few more decades we may get to really explore questions around whether consciousness is something spiritual/other-worldly, or simply an emergent property of going beyond a particular threshold of neuronal capacity or simply a self-referential program that is convincing enough to appear conscious. I can't wait. Really.

Given Kurzweil's supposition about the double exponential rate of expansion of technology, that means there is a heck of a lot of stuff that will need to be brought to market in the next 35 years. Hence my interest in venture capital, angel investing, technology cycles and trends, and the tricky process of nurturing technology from idea to plan to funding to company to production, and eventually to some sort of exit. Hence I will be writing a lot on business and technology development.

Some of the most fascinating events are transpiring in the border wars between business, technology, society, and our natural environment. Bio-ethics - how will we use cloning? Nanotechnology - will it create autonomous gray-goo that will devour us and the earth? Bio-IT convergence - will we really build the Ceylons? What about the ability to project power and wage war - on a budget? According to Lord William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson in "The Sovereign Individual", that is one of the key factors that contributes to massive historical inflection points. As technology changes the power equation, power-structures and economies follow suit. Consider: Osama Bin Laden, a multi-millionaire (who was supported by the U.S.), is now the enemy of the American goverment. They have for the first time in history chosen to target an individual rather than a nation-state. Primarily because of the alleged threat of relatively massive power (bio-weaponry) for minimal cost. I will rant, question, and point to interesting discussions in this area as they develop.

Finally, I have some more mundane, smaller-view areas that I am very interested in as well. They include but are not limited to: Complex Systems, Emergence theory, Health & Wellness, Environmental issues, Renewable Energy, Ethics, Fitness and sport, Humour, Interesting People, Nanotechnology, Philanthropy, Privacy/Security, Sustainable Development, and World Affairs.

I wish I could remember the author who said, "I do not write what I know, I write so that I may know myself." That was very wise. That is also a goal of this blog. Thanks for reading.