The Tech Industry and Tech Investing is the single largest investment opportunity in the United States in 2016 and we have covered this topic here in geekersmagazine.com
Tech Investing 2016 – Catching The Facebook of Tomorrow
The Tech Industry is far bigger than the financial sector or the industrial sector. This is so because technology is ever present in our world and it’s difficult to imagine modern life without using it. Whether it’s using an electric shaving kit in the early hours of the morning, looking up information on Google after that, playing Angry Birds on your iPhone, chatting with your parents on Skype, firing up the laptop, using a word processor or a spreadsheet at work, or updating your Facebook status later – there is technology, and hence, tech investing companies involved at every stage of what you do in a typical day of your life.
Tech investing companies involved at every stage of what you do in a typical day of your life.
Tech Investing and The Rapid Cycle of Obsolescence
It is perhaps the “rapid cycle of obsolescence”, that makes tech investing so different, from say, investing in a painting franchise, as mentioned earlier. For instance, the 1990’s. The 90’s are still fresh in the memory of a lot of people. After all, nobody has quite forgotten the Clinton Presidency, and even today, popular TV shows such as Seinfeld and Friends retain their hold on popular culture. But are things really the same?
For one, in the 1990’s, the internet was still new, the penetration was quite low and we had painfully slow dial-up modems. There were no smartphones, and the few mobile phones that existed were embarrassingly poor in design and technology. There were, of course, no Google (well Google was founded in 1998, but very few had really heard of it), or Facebook.
Now, well into the last few years of the Obama Presidency, we don’t have to tell you about how things have changed, and how life has, in many ways become unrecognizable from what it was only 20 years ago. Thanks to the tech industry, and yes, to tech investing companies that had the foresight and the chutzpah to invest in young men such as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Mark Zuckerberg, to name just a few.
Catching the Mark Zuckerbergs of Tomorrow
Things change fast in the tech industry, which makes it so important to latch on to the rising stars of tomorrow so that your investment goes on from, say, tens of thousands to hundreds of millions. What was Google worth in 2000 and what is it worth today? What was Facebook worth in 2007 and what is it worth today? Well, legendary tech investor Peter Thiel’s original $500,000 investment in Facebook, that was made in 2004 when it only had 1 million members, as worth $2 billion at the time of Facebook’s IPO in 2014. Tech investing companies use a well-defined process that helps them identify and work with the Mark Zuckerbergs of tomorrow.
The Key Areas of Tech Investing
The five key areas of tech investing are in semiconductors, software, networking, eCommerce and hardware. Semiconductors are called “chips” on common parlance, and are used as microprocessors, microcontrollers, sensors and amplifiers – they are the solid foundation on with the entire tech industry is built on.
The software industry knows no introduction. It’s interesting that even aging software giants such as Microsoft are back in fashion today, just because of a leadership change, worth close to $400 billion in market capitalization. In software, cloud computing, or Software as a Service (SaaS) is the big thing that tech investing companies are looking at.
Networking forms the backbone of the internet. Veteran tech investors even today get emotional about the success of Networking companies such as Cisco Technologies. The focus today is on small networking companies working on network security.
The growth of eCommerce giants such as Amazon and eBay is well documented. eCommerce holds the greatest potential for tech investing companies as the sector has unlimited possibilities and sees fast-rising star every year – the B2B (business-to-business) eCommerce trade in 2010 was estimated to be worth $3 trillion.
Hardware is a little out of fashion today, as manufacturing in hardware has largely been outsourced to China and other Asian countries, but the original hardware successes such as Apple, are still going strong.
