For the first time in eight years, Mary Meeker will let me ask her a few questions after she does her famous market overview. Each year, Mary pushes the boundaries of how many slides she can cram into one High Order Bit, topping out at 70+ slides in ten or so minutes last year. But given her move this year from star Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley to high-profile VC, I asked if Mary might spend another ten or so minutes with us to answer a few questions. She graciously agreed.
Kleiner Perkins has focused on social and mobile in a big way over the past year, raising significant funds, investing in Twitter, Square, Spotify, Klout, Path, and many more. But the firm does much more. Mary is a sharp observer of trends in our industry, and I am looking forward to picking her brain, if only for a few minutes. Sow hat do you want to hear from her?
As an extra incentive, I’ll be picking the best three questions from these series of posts (including Paul Otellini, Mary Meeker, Michael Roth, Steve Ballmer, James Gleick, Vic Gundotra, and Reid Hoffman, among others.) The authors of those questions will get complimentary passes to Web 2 – a more than $4000 value. So get to commenting, and thank you!
Previously: Mark Pincus, John Donahoe, Marc Benioff, Dick Costolo, Michael Dell. Next up: Michael Roth.
To Mary: Do you think the growth of SoLoMo platforms will make semantic tech more important for browsing, searching, and discovering content, as users demand that their more constricted GUI’s become better able to infer the user’s intent contextually?
What’s the future of crowdfunding, entrepreneurship, and gov’t policy?
I read last year the book: Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, it was a great book, great insight on how he can present a new product on only three slides.
His basis is on Zen and minimalist practices making it appealing and easy to digest information.
Question: Does Mary Meeker follow similar practices? Zen? Minimalism?
This might sound absurd (being that I am an entrepreneur and should solve the problem – precisely b/c that’s what entrepreneurs do), but it is a serious question:
Who is going to make entrepreneurship more “user friendly” – so to speak?
Another way of looking at: There are so many mountains to climb as an entrepreneur. What else can be done besides what is being done now (mentors, startup incubators, etc.) to bring entrepreneurship to entrepreneurs?
What percentage of your portfolio companies use hadoop or other big data resources?
Where does Mary see the largest segment shift in web services with regards to user intentions and which Company(s) are best positioned to capitalize on these new market trends?
Applying all your experience, knowledge, research and outlines of competitive analysis: If you were required to allocate your entire investment capital into one new emerging web company, who would it be and why?
Of all your trends, which one do internet executives continually dismiss as unimportant and what misconceptions prevent them from realizing it?