#34 – Winter Has Arrived – Part 2 – End of Season 2 … the Burst of the Bubble and the Crisis Upon Us… What’s next?!

In this episode, the end of our 2nd Season, we close our discussion on the crisis that is upon us and deep dive on what will happen next. We finalize with a brief recap of our season 2 and on what we got right and wrong. Navigation: Intro (01:34) Section 1: What Will Happen Next Section 2: End of Season 2 - a Quick Recap Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Bertrand Welcome to Tech Deciphered episode 34. This is our second episode on the bubble that's finally burst winter that has arrived. We will talk more in this episode about what will happen next. If you want to listen to our episode 33, where we talk about what has happened, what is happening, go back to that episode. And for this one, we'll be focused on future, short-term, medium-term, where we believe this is going. Nuno So what is happening next? There were some significant changes in the world that we're really not coming back from. And we've heard some amazing things and some well-written analysis, or at least some very pointed notes from people like Benedict Devin and many others that we have inspired ourselves with. Nuno But in effect that the whole notion of digitization is true, I think we have had a forced digitization over the last two years, which has really brought us forward. Our ability to do ecommerce, our ability to actually use services that we legacy services and have ways of interacting with those services that are more virtual than they were ever before, our ability to get telemedicine and many other things. Nuno So there's been a lot of moving forward that has been positive. There's a lot of things that, in our personal experiences, for example, in the home, we don't accept anymore. I think Benedict was the one saying no one is going back to cable. I'm not sure that holes in that sense, but obviously there's been a lot of court cutting streaming seems to have one day. Clearly, it was already relatively clear. Probably, it got accelerated through COVID. Nuno We'll now see the reckoning of that in the next few years on who's going to be the big winners in that space, but certainly, I think that's moved forward. The ability for us to really communicate with each other at a distance is now a theme that needs to be addressed by everyone. So it's no longer an afterthought. It's not like, okay, oh, maybe we can get on a plane and go somewhere. No, no, no, no. Nuno Do we have a good way for our team, for example, in a professional environment, to interact with each other at a distance? What are the tools we have to do that in? So all this notion of hybrid versus remote versus being in the office doesn't really matter. Remote work needs to work. And we've learned our lessons and there is a lot of tools missing. There's a lot of things that haven't been done properly. Nuno We also know for a fact that there are pieces of the acceleration that we saw in biotech driven by COVID and the vaccines that ultimately are here to stay. So there's definitely not a going back on this either. Obviously, there's a lot of work still to be done in digitization, in particular, across different sectors of the economy. Nuno But honestly, with all the tragedy that COVID has been and all the crap that we've been embedded in for the last two years as a global society, the silver lining is, guys, we've got the digitization we've been asking for. The whole digital transformation stuff we've been talking about, it happened in two years, what probably would have taken 10 years. Nuno And again, it's not perfect, there's still pieces missing. But even the pieces that are missing, I think, because of this shock that happened to the world, we are all working from home. Because of the shock, the pieces that are missing are now much clearer. The flaws in the systems and tools that we had are all much clearer. Nuno Again, I think this is an amazing situation for us to be in as investors. This is an amazing situation for us to be in as entrepreneurs. It is now clearer that there are things missing that we can build. Bertrand I totally agree. A lot of things got accelerated are not disappearing. Another big example is around the cloud computing. The move to the cloud has been accelerated. It's more efficient, it's easier, ultimately, for many cases, less costly. So this is not something we are coming back. The same with mobile devices, which in some ways, strangely enough, did pretty well. Bertrand Mobile devices, mobile content in a situation where a lot of people were spending much more time at home. But even at home, you prefer the smaller screen that you have really everywhere with you. You don't just want to be focused on one big screen. Some of those sectors are going to probably go a bit more back to normal. Bertrand Edtech has seen a lot of tension, not just because of COVID, but also because of regulations and changing platforms rules. Edtech is probably going to face a lot of unknowns, especially in front of an economic prices that are coming. Ecommerce, we probably keep moving forward, but as we have seen, it has been coming back a bit more in line with past trends. Bertrand But obviously, yes, a lot of things are not coming back, a lot of habits are not coming back. It's still amazing for me to see how now everyone, there's a video confer individuals, professionals, such situation, investment situation, stuff that in many cases were not possible, two, three years ago, would have been seen as a platform. Bertrand Yeah, it's that acceleration of digitization is there to stay and more is to come. And I would say you could even argue that with an economic crisis where typically you want to optimize your spend more, there should be more digitization because people will realize that the most efficient channels are digital to which consumers transact with them. And you will need to be even more hardcore in order to optimize your spend. Nuno In some cases, the nuances of what happened during COVID have become very apparent in the last few months in particular. So for example, for us, one thing that wasn't clearly solved in this whole stack of communication within the Enterprise and within the company was definitely the water cooler moments, the ability that people have going to each other's offices or each other's desks and asking something about something else that's very quick in answering. Nuno And for example, for us, that has led us to some thinking around that thesis, we actually might make an investment in that space, so I'm preempting a little bit that. But there's definitely pieces of the puzzle because they got so disjointed they became clear. Nuno The notion for me right now that is super exciting is this acceleration that we got, nobody probably would have asked for it that we got a global pandemic, but it provided a shock to society that has at least given us some positive things. And those things are things that we can build upon that can help us move forward across a variety of areas. Nuno One is that there's been obviously advancements in artificial intelligence. We've been paying attention quite heavily at artificial intelligence. We think we are now at the point of what we call the app economy and artificial intelligence, where there is a lot of leading platforms that you can build on top of. And so what you're effectively doing is you're being amazing in terms of algorithms. Nuno You have amazing engineers with you and data scientists that really allow you to go to the next level, in terms of how you build your own platform around existing and underlying platforms. I think we're going to see advancements around artificial intelligence that go well beyond it. That what got us here is not what is going to get us to the next level, what got us here was brute force. Nuno The next level is going to be finesse. It's going to be smaller datasets, better algorithms, bare methodologies, less computer or compute intense methodologies. A lot of exciting stuff happening around it. Nuno And we've talked a lot about other big advancements. Quantum computing has moved forward. I'm not sure we're there yet, to be very honest in that field. Biotech has had incredible movements. I think anyone that's in biotech today should feel like totally vindicated that was the right choice. Bertrand Yes, indeed. Nuno That's something for the future. Anyone that's around data manipulation and from anywhere from data quality, data engineering, data science, it's essential. The word becomes more digitized. Data becomes actually more important even. There's a lot of amazing things happening in the world. And obviously one of your favorite, which is nuclear energy and nuclear fusion. Bertrand I've been a big fan of nuclear for more than 20 years. I'm glad that finally, this is something that is back on the table for people who are thinking carefully about how you solve energy needs instead of proposing to go back to prehistoric times and stop using energy. I'm very excited that nuclear fission, it's back on the table that companies are investing more into nuclear fusion programs as well. Bertrand That's two fantastic technologies. I believe we absolutely need more of them. You take one famous example, in France, around 80% of all electricity is nuclear. That's a big difference in terms of energy dependence, but also in energy pollution. Let's not forget there is no pollution coming from a nuclear reactor,...