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There has been a lot of exciting tech + urbanism news this week in Toronto. Uber announced that it’s building a new artificial intelligence team in the city and it came out that Sidewalk Labs (Alphabet company) had responded to an RFP put out by Waterfront Toronto.
The RFP, which closed at the end of last month, was to find an “innovation and funding partner” for the 12-acre Quayside precinct shown above in purple. It’s the first parcel of the “eastern waterfront.” (Click here if you’d like to download a copy of the actual Request for Proposal.)
These days, it’s easy to be cynical about these sorts of announcements. Every day you hear about some new innovation center or tech hub. But what’s perhaps unique about this one is that Sidewalk Labs is thinking crazier than most and they have the financial backing that crazy sometimes needs.
If you’re not at all familiar with Sidewalk Labs, I suggest you read this post about how the company wants to build cities “from the internet up.” It’s by their CEO, Daniel L. Doctoroff.
Not surprisingly, they are thinking about everything from automated trash systems and autonomous vehicles (including their impact on built form, cost of living, productivity, etc.) to exchange-based thermal grids and more cost effective construction methods. And it’s not just about the technology. It’s about marrying tech + urbanism.
Also interesting is their model of setting up a “hyper-focused labs”, which are each run by entrepreneurs-in-residence. These internal labs are focused on things like housing affordability, the health challenges faced by low-income city residents, and so on.
It’s all very exciting. So let’s ensure this moves forward and let’s hope Sidewalk Labs keeps thinking crazy. Toronto is ready to lead and show the world how a city built from the internet up should perform.
Fred Wilson has a great post up on his blog today about open protocols. By open protocols he is referring to things like TCP/IP (transmission control protocol and internet protocol), HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), and SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol). Whether you realize it or not, you rely on these protocols every single day if you go on the internet, browse the web, and write emails.
If you’re interested in these sorts of nerdy things, I recommend you read his post. I’m not going to write about open protocols today – though I do find them fascinating. Instead, I would like to talk about the last paragraph of his post.
Here it is:
“I believe that business model innovation is more disruptive that technological innovation. Incumbents can adapt to and adopt new technological changes (web to mobile) way easier than they can adapt to and adopt new business models (selling software to free ad-supported software). So this new protocol-based business model feels like one of these “changes of venue” as my partner Brad likes to call them. And that smells like a big investable macro trend to me.”
This is interesting to me for 2 reasons.
First, business model innovation is incredibly powerful. Once a company has built itself up around an existing model, it can be painfully difficult to change. Imagine you have a 200 person sales team that would become unnecessary should you pivot your business model. Are you going to fire them and make the switch?
This is also one of the reasons why some tech companies can exist for so long before they make any money. Sometimes – but not always – it’s because the investors believe that if the company has users, attention or whatever it may be, that they will figure out a way to monetize them/it. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a business model that no one has ever thought of before.
Second, look how he is publicly sharing his investment thesis. Why would he do that? Shouldn’t he just go off and do it and not tell anyone? Clearly, he too believes that there’s greater value in being open and transparent.
Aaron M. Renn recently published an article in The Washington Post talking about carless cities and driverless cars. It’s an interesting read, but I’m not going to talk about those topics today. So if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll have to read his piece.
I do, however, want to focus on one particular aspect of it.
In it, he talks about how Tesla is shifting the “locus of power in the auto industry” from Detroit to Silicon Valley and, at the same time, changing the way cars are sold. Tesla sells direct to consumers through its corporate stores, whereas franchise laws in almost every U.S. state mandate that new cars need to be sold through dealers.
I’m not sure how these laws came to be, but it’s interesting to note yet another example of technology and the internet sparking disintermediation. That is, the removal of middle people, distributors, brokers, and so on. It’s the same thing that is happening as a result of companies like Uber and technologies like Bitcoin.
I would imagine that lot of these legacy distribution models exist today because it was previously the most efficient option. If you were a car company based in Detroit, a network of local franchisees all across the country working to sell your cars was probably a great thing. But now there are other options, as is the case with many other industries.
So what’s next?
Wikipedia calls out the following industries as still being in the midst of disintermediation:
I bet you all know which one I’m watching closely.
There has been a lot of exciting tech + urbanism news this week in Toronto. Uber announced that it’s building a new artificial intelligence team in the city and it came out that Sidewalk Labs (Alphabet company) had responded to an RFP put out by Waterfront Toronto.
The RFP, which closed at the end of last month, was to find an “innovation and funding partner” for the 12-acre Quayside precinct shown above in purple. It’s the first parcel of the “eastern waterfront.” (Click here if you’d like to download a copy of the actual Request for Proposal.)
These days, it’s easy to be cynical about these sorts of announcements. Every day you hear about some new innovation center or tech hub. But what’s perhaps unique about this one is that Sidewalk Labs is thinking crazier than most and they have the financial backing that crazy sometimes needs.
If you’re not at all familiar with Sidewalk Labs, I suggest you read this post about how the company wants to build cities “from the internet up.” It’s by their CEO, Daniel L. Doctoroff.
Not surprisingly, they are thinking about everything from automated trash systems and autonomous vehicles (including their impact on built form, cost of living, productivity, etc.) to exchange-based thermal grids and more cost effective construction methods. And it’s not just about the technology. It’s about marrying tech + urbanism.
Also interesting is their model of setting up a “hyper-focused labs”, which are each run by entrepreneurs-in-residence. These internal labs are focused on things like housing affordability, the health challenges faced by low-income city residents, and so on.
It’s all very exciting. So let’s ensure this moves forward and let’s hope Sidewalk Labs keeps thinking crazy. Toronto is ready to lead and show the world how a city built from the internet up should perform.
Fred Wilson has a great post up on his blog today about open protocols. By open protocols he is referring to things like TCP/IP (transmission control protocol and internet protocol), HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol), and SMTP (simple mail transfer protocol). Whether you realize it or not, you rely on these protocols every single day if you go on the internet, browse the web, and write emails.
If you’re interested in these sorts of nerdy things, I recommend you read his post. I’m not going to write about open protocols today – though I do find them fascinating. Instead, I would like to talk about the last paragraph of his post.
Here it is:
“I believe that business model innovation is more disruptive that technological innovation. Incumbents can adapt to and adopt new technological changes (web to mobile) way easier than they can adapt to and adopt new business models (selling software to free ad-supported software). So this new protocol-based business model feels like one of these “changes of venue” as my partner Brad likes to call them. And that smells like a big investable macro trend to me.”
This is interesting to me for 2 reasons.
First, business model innovation is incredibly powerful. Once a company has built itself up around an existing model, it can be painfully difficult to change. Imagine you have a 200 person sales team that would become unnecessary should you pivot your business model. Are you going to fire them and make the switch?
This is also one of the reasons why some tech companies can exist for so long before they make any money. Sometimes – but not always – it’s because the investors believe that if the company has users, attention or whatever it may be, that they will figure out a way to monetize them/it. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a business model that no one has ever thought of before.
Second, look how he is publicly sharing his investment thesis. Why would he do that? Shouldn’t he just go off and do it and not tell anyone? Clearly, he too believes that there’s greater value in being open and transparent.
Aaron M. Renn recently published an article in The Washington Post talking about carless cities and driverless cars. It’s an interesting read, but I’m not going to talk about those topics today. So if that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll have to read his piece.
I do, however, want to focus on one particular aspect of it.
In it, he talks about how Tesla is shifting the “locus of power in the auto industry” from Detroit to Silicon Valley and, at the same time, changing the way cars are sold. Tesla sells direct to consumers through its corporate stores, whereas franchise laws in almost every U.S. state mandate that new cars need to be sold through dealers.
I’m not sure how these laws came to be, but it’s interesting to note yet another example of technology and the internet sparking disintermediation. That is, the removal of middle people, distributors, brokers, and so on. It’s the same thing that is happening as a result of companies like Uber and technologies like Bitcoin.
I would imagine that lot of these legacy distribution models exist today because it was previously the most efficient option. If you were a car company based in Detroit, a network of local franchisees all across the country working to sell your cars was probably a great thing. But now there are other options, as is the case with many other industries.
So what’s next?
Wikipedia calls out the following industries as still being in the midst of disintermediation:
I bet you all know which one I’m watching closely.
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