Tag Archives: Technology Predictions

Graph Search: What Zuck said!

Enough articles about Graph Search. Just one thing that Mark Zuckerberg said was striking.., “Graph Search is designed to show you the answer and not links to answers.”

For the record., check the last line from the most unnoticed post on my blog – Future of Search: A Search without Links: “Future of Search is not 100s of links on the search results page. Its one result – just exactly what you want.”

#ForTheRecord

Why LinkedIn should acquire AngelList

Had predicted earlier that LinkedIn shall acquire SlideShare; Two years back I wrote that Quora should be acquired by LinkedIn, though that has not happened yet, I strongly feel its imminent to happen. Adding to that list, I strongly feel AngelList will be acquired by LinkedIn.

While LinkedIn continues to grow (it recently crossed 200 Mn users), Naval & Nivi’s efforts on AngelList have been spectacular. Over 100,000+ companies/startups listed, 2% of them are hiring (through AngelList) and over 200,000+ early adopters (which includes people who matter) on the platform. And there is speculation that AngelList is raising investments at a valuation of over $150 Mn USD.

Among few user trends I am noticing with regards to AngelList – People from startup community on Twitter are replacing LinkedIn profile links with AngelList.

Here is why I feel LinkedIn should acquire AngelList –

  • LinkedIn appeals to larger audience across multiple sectors, but startups is where the action is. For startups, AngelList is more valuable than LinkedIn.
  • Startups (or companies) are present and more active on AngelList than on LinkedIn.
  • While LinkedIn is professional resume, business connections, AngelList is business in action for Startups. Take a business vertical and be immensely valuable to them, AngelList is perfect example for this.
  • AngelList is not just beneficial to startups, but also to the entire community of startup ecosystem. Its API now handles over 3 Million requests per day.
  • AngelList is rolling out features at a much faster pace than LinkedIn… Introductions, Hiring through AL, Investing directly in startups, showcasing marquee customers for companies, service providers and so on. 
  • It will be very difficult (next to impossible) for LinkedIn to replicate such products for a particular vertical like startups. But it might be easier for AngelList to move beyond the tech startup community.
  • Technology is shaping every domain. As startups are established in multiple business verticals, it will attract talent and early adopters from every segment on to AngelList… to a point that in future AngelList might be a threat to LinkedIn.

When Quora was small, its biggest challenge was to break beyond the startup community. I don’t foresee AngelList wanting to immediately expand beyond the startup community and its focus will continue to be startups for some time.

And yes these are the early trends. With that I include a possible acquisition of AngelList by LinkedIn to my list of Tech Predictions.

Tracking My Tech Predictions: The ones that came true!

Over past few years I have been tracking technology trends, analyzing and love predicting things through posts on this blogs, on twitter or through my annual technology trends & predictions. I recently started tracking them in a attempt to see how good is hit ratio. Here are a few of those that really saw the light of day.

Other Tech Predictions mentioned on this Blog:

  • Feb 2010: Social Platform intermediaries in Social Commerce space with no clear value propositions will fail as larger eCommerce players will self-integrate.
    May 2011: Blippy / Swipely pivoted from core proposition – sharing purchases.
  • May 2011: TRPs will be questioned. Future of TRP is digital. Crowdsourced TRPs,
    Aug 2012: NDTV submits a lawsuit against Nielson alleging rigging TRP data.
    Oct 2012: Startup iDubba launches iTRPs
    Dec 2012: Nielson annouces partnership with Twitter for Twitter based ratings.
  • Sept 2011: Google+ will head no where as Social Product
    Today: Its evident! When did you last visit your Google+ profile.

From 2012 Tech Predictions:

  • April 2012: LinkedIn will acquire SlideShare
    May 2012: Yes, LinkedIn acquired SlideShare for $119 Mn
  • April 2012: Indian Ecommerce will see Acqui-hires
    May 2012: Snapdeal acquires eSportsBuy and then shuts it down.
    May 2012: Yebhi acquires StylishYou and shuts it down.
    Aug 2012: Hushbabies acquires MangoStreet and shuts it down.
    Aug 2012: FashionandYou acquires UrbanTouch, UrbanTouch management takes over.
    Related Post by me: Why Ecommerce acquisitions make no sense in early stage.
  • April 2012: Jabong will be aggressive play by Rocket Internet. Will be in Top 5 Ecommerce players in India
    May 2012: NextBigWhat apparently pointed out that they are.
  • April 2012: Series B crunch for players focused on vertical ecommerce.
    Evident: Many ecommerce startups who raised Series A struggling raising a follow on round.

From 2011 Tech Predictions: 

  • Jan 2011: VCs will consolidate Indian Ecommerce plays within own portfolio
    Feb 2012: Flipkart acquires LetsBuy
    Nov 2012: Myntra acquires SherSingh / Exclusively.in
  • Jan 2011: A large player will enter Group Buying / Coupons space
    May 2011: Times Group enters daily deals business with Times Deal
  • Jan 2011: Pubmatic will be acquired
    Nov 2011: Rumors of Pubmatic in acquisition talks by Amazon. Pubmatic turned it down for IPO
  • Jan 2011: AdMax Network
    Feb 2012: Hinted towards AdMax Network in SE Asia which leveraged local inventory and is a leader in these countries. While I expected something like this to happen in India, interestingly Komli acquired AdMax (No direct prediction here).