Category: tech

Timing…. bouncing balls and momentum

achanman2 Comments

Timing.  As the years have gone I realized is that many times… timing is one of if not the biggest deciding factors in many things that we do.

During high school, I used to feel invincible and unstoppable when I played sports.  I was at the peak of my athletic abilities and thought that I was at the top of my game.  This was the same for both basketball and golf.  As I played more throughout college and thereafter in rec leagues after graduating, the game seemed to start slowing down.  Not in the sense that I was moving slower but that my understanding and anticipation seemed to form an inverse relationship with my flattening “bounce” in my step (or was it just the growing belly…. hmmm).  Are we better at our sport/thing as we gain more experience or were we better at our physical best?  Which would you choose?

Similar to investing in tech it seems.  Is there momentum pushing for growth and building up a bubble? If you catch a wave and find a great team building something when nobody cares….. does a tree falling in the empty woods make a sound?  What if you find a team building something that suddenly everyone is building…. can you hear the distinct shouts of someone in a room of 100 shouting others?  I think this is a valid question for us all to ask when looking at new companies and opportunities….. Is this something that is genuinely valuable or is it just because everyone is talking about it?  Will the business persevere and continue to grow or will it drop off a cliff after the excitement dies down?

Things to think about.  Timing.

Realities

achanman1 Comment

Under very random circumstances, quite a few things I’ve experienced recently have made me think about “reality”.  It’s not in a ‘the world is not flat’ type of way, but more about how far we’ve all come and how much there is to go.  Bare with me.

Not more than 3 months ago, I had the opportunity to truly experience Virtual Reality for the first time.  As a kid, I remember thinking of HMDs (are we really going to call it this?) as the perfect piece to a halloween Cyclops costume then eventually as futuristic private 100″ screens googles but I also remember completely forgeting about them as a consumer product. It seem to never really deliver for what it was made up to be.  But after putting on the Oculus, I honestly feel that the time has come.  What I felt was not movie screen to IMAX wow, it was radio to TV wow (so to speak…).  It may sound geeky and silly to some people but how my body felt and reacted was NOT what I expected.  The scale and size was nothing like I’ve seen before…. well other than in real life. Feeling like I was there at the live (NOT virtual) venue was amazing… again being there in person would be amazing too but I was sitting in my office…  For a second there I was a mixture of shocked, excited, suspicious, confused and happy all at the same time.  Truly spectacular stuff and I can’t wait for the proliferation of headsets in the consumer market to really see where entertainment can go.  It’s starting to play mind tricks and crossing Total Recall/Matrix lines…. but I know I’d pay good money with no hesitation if I were able to BE back at Cameron Stadium for the season home games again.

A short chat about game consoles today while at the Vectr office construction site also made me think about this.  Pong to Pacman Arcade to handheld consoles (the single game ones) to Gameboy, Game Gear, Nintendo (red and white), Genesis, Atari, Super Famicon (Asia), full scale Arcades, Playstation/Saturn, N64, Dreamcast, Wii, eventually Xbox and PS 234……all lead to VR and being “in the game”.  Reality?! Look how far its all come.  very cool.

Another realization was completely not related was from Brazil.  The shock, unity, anger, horror, sadness, more sadness, applause to opposition ending with a cynical self applause of the 7-1 score between Germany and Brazil in the World Cup semifinals was another crazy reality.  It took me a while to register witnessing what will be talked about for decades, if not forever.  Couldn’t quite believe that Brazil, of all teams, would get crushed like that… and at home!!??!?! Unbelievable.  On the other hand, I completely see and understand how the Brazilian team got, strategically and technically, crushed that way.  I guess in the historical context of Brazilian football…. unbelievable… but as the squad that day…. completely possible, obviously.

Anyways.  This is my first real post and not sure if and how it will be read but… I had a good time writing it.  Hope everyone is doing good!