BELL CONSULTING GROUP INC.

Click photos for full-screen view and captions

Speakers:

• Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
• Vinod Khosla, Founder, Khosla Ventures
• Josh Kopelman, Managing Partner, First Round Capital
• Roger McNamee, Co-Founder, Elevation Partners
• Joe Schoendorf, Partner, Accel Partners
• Tony Perkins, Creator & Editor-in-Chief, AlwaysOn (Moderator)

Moderator, and Churchill Club founder Tony Perkins.

Sun Microsystems founder Vinod Koshla makes a point

The big annual debate.  The recurring, most talked about theme of the predictions? Different variants of: your cellular phone is going to turn into a computer which can surf the internet, take photos, etc and that will become a bigger market than the current laptop market. OK, that's pretty obvious; since it's already happening.  Next?

In what was easily the most imaginative and funnest prediction of the evening, Vinod Koshla - who co-founded Sun Microsystems in his mid-20's - sees mobile phones turning into powerful computers (no mention of iPhone or Android?) integrating projection display technology, thus eventually eliminating the need for laptop computers.  Vinod spoke so earnestly and passionately about his visions for technology that he was interrupted twice by appreciative applause, like a politician promising to cut taxes.

OK, so that'll never happen (at least, probably not the projection part, as a mass market).  But he was really the only panelist to take a risk with a specific "product technology" idea. But all the panelists worked hard at it, carried their weight and conducted an earnest debate for over two hours.  Each panelist took on two positions - all summarized on the slides linked to above.

Josh Kopelman rose to the occasion in his debute, bringing up the fascinating topic of the implicit internet, contrasting it to today's explicit internet.  He brought up the mildly unsettling fact that internet users leaving a permanent "data exhaust trail" every time they use the internet; which is mined for various commercial purposes; and delved into a few of the ramifications.  The panel ended up having some interesting exchanges about what might, or might not happen in the future with regard to security of data "in the cloud". 

Kopelman also boldly took the world of venture capital to task for it's 10-year negative returns on investment, while predicting a massive shakeout for venture capital firms just around the corner. The other panelists conceeded the well-known fact that "returns are very concentrated in a few firms" but deemed that no big problem, since institutional investors have deemed VC "an asset class", come hell or high water.  The panel didn't seem to want to examine a fact that he pointed out, well known to be true - that venture capital returns are extraordinarily skewed to just a few firms; to a much greater degree than other high-risk asset classes including, even hedge funds. It does raise the question of whether the venture capital business really scales that well; but scale it has. 

Roger McNamee, late stage investor extraordinaire and everyday rock and roll guitarist, made a great point about how the US cellular carriers are "harvesting" earlier R&D investments which created 1st and 2nd generation cellular technologies; versus investing in the future.  He remaines optimistic that PALM will make it big again; Roger's firm is invested in PALM in a big way and has a way of picking the winners; but we don't get that one.

I found it curious that with all the panel's discussion of mobile computing and smart phones, it took a long time before the term "iPhone" or "Apple" came into the conversation.  iPhone is the hottest, most disruptive thing going on in that realm of tech at the moment (John Doerre wouldn't likely have made that oversite, with his firms $100M i-Fund investment pool). Google's Android initiative also received scant mention, which was equally strange in a debate which spent over 2/3 of it's two hours on the topic of predicting advances in mobile communications devices. Perhaps it was in deference to Roger and PALM; and his investments certainly have had a way of working out well in the past!

Joe Schoendorf from Accel laid out a convincing argument that the coming global shortage in drinkable water is the thing to worry about - versus global warming. He believes the world is running out of drinkable water and that it will kill millions, in our lifetime. 

Moderator Tony Perkins was funny and kept the panel in line with some great jibes -- he could easily stand in for Jon Stewart on the Comedy Channel without anyone noticing. He did a good job of lambasting John Doerr for not showing up this year ("we have a three strikes you're out policy, and John's predictions last year put him over the top...").

Steve Jurvetson took some ribbing for being too smart (is there a story there?). He had a point about shifting demographics and a baby boomer turning 60 every 11 seconds.  He also had a point about evolutionary technology that not a single person in the 700+ ballroom crowd could understand.  He was most articulate and probably right about everything.

It was a lively and thought-provoking debate, covering a lot of ground in the fast-moving world of tech. 

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