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Bring on 2012...The Abundance Showdown!
Howard Lindzon
December 05, 2011
I am in the money business so the calendar matters.
That said, it is December so it’s a great time to think back on 2011 and forward into 2012.
The year 2011 was a year of abundance in scale of money, networks, networking, web entrepreneurs, smart phones and evidence.
The year 2011 was infuriating if you care about money. Europe and America printed it, the banks continue to get it for free, the bank executives kept theirs and TAKE more and the ’99 percent’ are freaking out about it. The team at 60 minutes did a great job laying out the simple case for The Justice Department to punish some of the laziest and undeserving thieves of all time.
I believe the year 2012 will be an ‘Abundance’ showdown.
In 2012, the ‘smoking guns’ and ‘whistleblowers’ reach a tipping point against certain executives that have only lost sleep.
With oil at $100 and the Dow not at 50, an energy showdown around the abundance of oil and alternatives is also at hand.
In the world of finance,’too big to fail’ may continue, but the flow of money from mutual funds will continue and likely accelerate. Cash and individual stocks will continue to shine as the cost of letting ‘experts’ manage it gets scrutinized. Expert networks like Twitter, TechStars, Y Combinator, AngelList, Stocktwits as well as secondary markets will deepen, evolve, engage us, grow and strengthen. Trust and cost will drive this.
Finally, on the web, David Pakman, successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist has me thinking hard about the ‘Abundance of Scale‘:
With it becoming easier to reach such scale, there is no longer a scarcity of scale. This means the value of achieving scale is declining. As investors, if we bet on properties that have simply “become big”, that bet may no longer be enough to establish value. The next 10 years of the web will be about utilizing data on top of scale to build businesses. We are entering a period where the business model innovation will become more important than the innovation producing traction and engagement. It has always been impressive to see startups with incredible traction. But just using this traction to produce scale will not be enough to create the great companies of tomorrow. [Some of these thoughts were expressed earlier in my post “Confusing Traction With Value”.]
Infuriating times, but opportunistic times as abundance rules!
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