I took the liberty of taking notes. Apologies in advance if my impressions did not capture what PG was trying to say -- I'm summarizing, not stenographing.

1) Innovation

We've still got it, including making things that are not just ways to waste time on the Internet. Evidence: sci-fi writers dramatically underestimate progress in our industry.

2) Biotech

Sexy like cleantech, but doesn't require government subsidies to make money. Also has competitive moat, because biotech is hard. (Don't worry, software still worthwhile, too).

3) Efficient markets

Free flow of information creates efficient markets where not possible before. Many of our startups do this, such as AirBnB, an efficient market in lodging. YC = "mass production techniques, applied to VC"

4) Measurement

"You make what you measure." Put a paper graph on the wall plotting your favorite metric. You'll optimize for it, celebrate improvements, and shoot yourself in the foot if you picked the wrong metric. Metrics show social customs are obsolete (like, e.g., display ads).

5) The United States

PG was born in England, is not "wild, jingoistic patriot", but still thinks reports of US's impending obsolescence are greatly exaggerated. The only thing that kills empires is when people can't make money by building stuff. Three ways this can happen:

  a)  Bandits steal the money.  (NYC)

  b)  Your government steals the money.  ("The England that I escaped from.")

  c)  Other countries steal the money.  (The Netherlands.)

Leading candidate for toppling US is China. PG seems skeptical.

6) Silicon Valley

Budget crisis in California is two sets of idiots playing chicken. You don't have to start in Valley, but it really, really helps.

7) Small companies

World is "higher resolution": stuff gets done but it doesn't require industrial empires anymore. Networked small organizations are more efficient. Economies of scale paper over all the other sins of large corporations, but nimbleness of small companies means little guys win.

8) Economic inequality

A network of small companies plus money not getting stolen will produce massive economic inequality. (Patrick notes: PG's essay on wealth creation is my favorite of all he has ever written. He has a convincing take on why massive economic inequality is a good thing, and it isn't based on trickle-down economics.) If your business model bets on increasing economic inequality, good for you.

9) Moore's Law

Computers getting better, but in uneven fashions (e.g. SSD, not "all components improve 2 years"). Programmers are lazy. Companies which enable programmers to be lazy (i.e. not change practices or working code to benefit from uneven improvements) and get automagic speed increases win.

10) Things On Screens

We spend a lot of time staring at screens. Wider population spending more time staring at screens. PG has a suntan from his monitor.

11) Server-based apps

(I missed this one.)

12) Super good customer service

Customers can switch easily, people are talking together more, so have such good customer service like it seems like a mistake. Customers can now participate in design of products in virtually real time.

13) Apparently frivolous stuff

Our startup founders use Facebook to talk to each other about work, not email. "Facebook has not found its monetization model yet", haha. This sort of adoption shows there is something really at work here. "It is surprisingly hard to do math that has no practical applications."

PG skipped Twitter. Can't get a good name on it, but it turns out Twitter is really useful as a "non-deterministic messaging protocol."

14) Programming languages

There will be a succession of new, popular languages. Use the next hot language. You can be the guy who writes the library for such-and-such. Server-based apps can now be cobbled together from multiple languages. "Super abstract languages, like the ones people successfully write applications in now, were once called 'scripting languages.'"

15) OSS

I can't name a company which did too much OSS. If no one has gone too far, we're probably not doing OSS enough yet.

16) Linux will never be a factor on the desktop

Limiting edge of OSS is design. Everyone thinks they are good at design. Most people are not good at design: look at the contents of their houses. What this means for the desktop: buy AAPL stock.

17) iPhone

iPhone is a big deal, and I'm bummed because Apple are jerks. There are two problems startups have that aren't their own faults: immigration and AppStore approvals. They're like something out of Kafka.

(Sidenote: We're not giving our startups too little money: they can all afford iPhones.)

Android will be crushed under Steve Jobs' heels, because Apple cares about the iPhone like Google cares about search.

iPhone (or something similar) will do for laptops what laptops did to desktop.

18) Design

Design is why the iPhone wins. 20 years ago, it would have been surprising to say American companies can beat Japanese companies in consumer electronics devices. Core competency moved from manufacturing to design after people got microprocessors to shoot themselves in the foot with. Plus, China commoditized manufacturing expertise.

19) Real Time Stuff

Web 2.0 doesn't mean anything. Real time does. Google Wave will actually be important, not just somebody's 20% project. It is like Google-branded Etherpad, and Etherpad is useful, so Wave will be a gamechanger. See also Twitter, useful in a way different than Wave. If you make the convex hull around Twitter/Wave, and see a space which is unoccupied, that is a worthwhile opportunity.

20) VC

VC won't go away because VCs need to give you money. They can make the terms arbitrarily better to put money in your pockets [Patrick notes: can't get 2 and 20 if you can't invest the money]. Great news for you, since [owners] will now have the market leverage. Expect better valuations and board control.

21) Founders

Founders will more and more have the upper hand. Investors have learned firing the founders is a bad play. More and more founders will be technical founders. Programmers can learn to do business: make something people want, charge them money for it.

There should be an O'Reilley book for business. It would be really short. "Make something people want, charge them money for it. Advanced: charge more money."

---

Trends Not To Bet On

1) Credentials granted by institutions

Admissions officers are terrible. Look at our applicants: college graduated from (and by implication, admitted to) does not predict success. Not surprising: colleges admissions are impersonal evaluation of 17 year olds based on criteria which can be successfully gamed for money. Credentials are an example of an illiquid market. (Pagerank for people would be nice -- our startup doing it didn't work out.)

2) Business school

B-school is West Point for industrial capitalism. It trains generals, not footsoldiers. Market now rewards people who can do stuff. The kind of people who would be good teachers own their own businesses, became rich, and now have no reason to teach B-school. Instead, we get folks who cannot do and are forced to teach.

3) Government

The people on the bridge changes, but the engine room is the same as always. There is an increasing disconnect between public and private sector: government and 1960s PG (Proctor & Gamble, not the other PG) fit each other like gloves, and now government does not match startups/software/etc much. Folks want to work in electronic medical records: they're going to think bureaucracy is terribly slow.

4) Copyright

"Don't start a music starup unless one of your co-founders is Johnny Cochran." Expect a long, bloody fight that the content industry loses.

5) Restricted flow of information

Getting more liquid, faster.

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower.

Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflation?

Using state figures and the CPI calculator:

1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars)

1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B)

2008-2009: $144B ($145)

2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B)

Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled.

You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less.

I feel the urge to get out numbers here, but it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Just out of User Interface curiosity how many other people immediately scrolled down to the six bullet points and ignored the rest?

Flow:

1. While the page is loading, look at the utm_source crap in the URL and wonder why the submitter couldn't be bothered to clean that up.

2. Read the first sentence and identify this as a writer of the "I should start with a personal anecdote to make people like me" school of writing (a US thing? not sure), and start skimming for the actual content.

3. Slow down when the "Anders Ericsson" anchor appears, and wait for the mandatory "10,000 hours" reference.

4. Skim the six points, and realize that there's nothing new here -- you've read the same article before, only written by someone else.

(yeah, yeah, I'll log off now.)

> It’s interesting how a lot of companies try to copy Apple but never seem to get it right.

I think many companies see the features (windows flying around in Exposé, brightly colored window management buttons, pulsing status light, etc.) but don't understand that generally Apple doesn't just throw something in for looks and has thoroughly researched and iterated internally on a particular solution.

At the expense of sounding fanatic, generally an Apple feature looks the way it does as a result of its function. (What is the problem: make window management easy. how is that solved: make all open windows easy to see by spreading them out). When other companies attempt to copy, they look at what Apple's solution looks like, not realizing what it _does_. (e.g. Areo Flip 3D: what should it look like: windows flying all over the place. what problem does this solve: ???)

VC funding :)

Way to rain on Skype's IPO hype.

It's the weirdest experience to see someone aggressively defend free software on the adobe.com website with Oracle as the target.

Problems with the article:

> Throughout history, it has invariably been easier to be male than female. Yes, this is an overgeneralisation and yes, there are exceptions, but by any important measure, women have had it rougher than men.

This one is a PC-friendly thing to say, the opposite point of view is not. If you haven't read it, I must urge you to check out the excellent "Is There Anything Good About Men?" essay by Roy Baumeister:

http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm

Across history, it's estimated that 80% of women all-time had children, whereas only 40% of men did - the majority of men died without descendents. Things like that. Definitely check out Baumeister's essay.

> In any arena you look — education, legal and voting rights, career opportunities and so on — it is far better to be a woman today than at any other point in history.

At the risk of being controversial, I would point out unhappiness, depression, and suicide are all massively up in those countries among women. I think - I'm hoping - that we're in a transition phase while society gets acclimated to having women as equal participants in the labor market. For a while, being traditionally feminine (focusing on beauty, kind temperament and disposition, managing a household, and raising children) was out of fashion and seen to be a lesser choice, despite the fact that women who act in that traditional role actually have higher happiness levels, lower depression levels, and lower suicide levels than women who are working in so-so positions. As the risk of being controversial, I'll say I firmly understand why a woman would give up these traditional pursuits of being a good wife and mother in order to be an excellent scientist, architect, artist, or entrepreneur, but I have no idea why a woman would rather be a low level middle manager or a clerk instead of being a wife, mother, and active member of the community. Motherhood seems to me like it'd be more enjoyable and more rewarding than all but the most satisfying and self-actualizing of professions. I know this is controversial, but I'm hoping society will adjust to a point where traditional femininity can peacefully coexist as a respected choice for women on how to live their lives, because I think it can be a suitable, powerful, happy, and meaningful for choice for many women, and it'd be a shame if a woman was peer-pressured to do a job she hates because "just getting married and being a housewife" is stigmatized these days.