Monday, December 31, 2018

Reflections on 2018: Richard Wolpert, The Soul Of A Deal

Editor's note: As we head into the new year, we've been featuring reflections on 2018 from notable investors, entrepreneurs, and others from Southern California's technology community. You'll be able to browse all of those contributions here. This morning's reflections are from Richard Wolpert, a longtime Southern California investor, and now author of The Soul Of A Deal (https://amzn.to/2PHR6sR)

What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?

Go Big or Go Home is a lesson I learned again :-). If you have a venture you believe in and you are showing good growth traction, it's all about growth not profitability. Raise as much as you can so long as you can keep the growth up. Uber still loses a few Billion dollars a year and will go public, likely in first half of ’19, for more the $50B. Amazon has razor thin profits compared to their revenue but Bezos doesn't care he just wants growth and world domination and has a market cap of $763B

What was the biggest news for your company in 2018?

I am answering this as the exec chairman of HelloTech and a venture partner at Amplify.LA and Accel. The biggest news was the continued bullish market now coming on ten years even though historical cycles show markets don't usually last more than 7-8 years. I had expected a correction much earlier in the year and I was wrong. We do, as of the writing of this in early December, seem to be seeing a correction at this time.

Are there any technology innovations, gadgets, devices, software, that you found most interesting in 2018?

The massive explosion of the Smart Speaker. AI, VR, AR, all exciting sectors in their infancy still IMHO however the smart speaker has already arrived and most companies and consumers don't yet fully grasp the significance this will play over the next few years. There is an all out ground war right now between Amazon and Google for control of voice in the home. Apple, who had Siri before any of this, has totally dropped the ball and is being left in the dust. He who controls the smart speaker in the home owns the gateway for all things in the home

Finally, what's your prediction on what will be most important thing for the technology industry in the coming year?

We have many really good IPO’s on the Horizon such as Uber and Lyft and Slack, most of which will probably try and get out in Q1, but the big question will be can the technology sector, and the market as a whole for that matter, keep up its bull run long beyond the normal cycle or will we see more than just a correction in 2019?

Richard Wolpert is the author of A Soul Of A Deal, a book on deal making, and is also a longtime angel investor in Southern California's technology industry. Wolpert has been responsible for many “firsts” throughout his career including: conceiving of and teaching the first Macintosh Programming Class at Stanford University (CS 193C), the first multi-user address book for the Macintosh (TouchBase), the first kids internet subscription service (Disney’s Daily Blast), the first Tivo-like product for the Internet Radio (BitBop Tuner), the first legitimate music subscription service for the Internet (MusicNet), and the first legitimate online movie subscription service (Starz! On Demand). Successfully negotiated ground breaking deals with several of the major media companies whose content became the basis for many of these products As an investor, managed personal investment fund, Chance Technologies (1995 to Present), served as an advisor to Accel Partners (2006 to Present), served as a partner at the Yucaipa Companies (1998 to 2000), and served as the Managing Director or the Mail Room Fund (2008 to 2010). Invested in more than 30 companies, a large percentage of which have had successful exits or continue on as successful companies, including: AdECN, AMG, AndroMedia, AudioMill, Data Sage, GameFly, GameSpy, Kongregate, Mob.ly, People Support, Smilebox, Sometrics, Three Rings, Scopely, PlayDek, and Universal Audio.