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raybon

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The whole Web 2.0 shift really changed power away from individuals to corporations on the Internet. The "appifization" further created walled gardens.

I remember using IRC, Lynx browser, Unix Talk in the 1990s and being genuinely impressed. I feel the same excitement with Crypto after many years.

Decentralized trust, pseudonymous identity and device-to-device communication will change the Internet for the better in the coming decade.

There is reason for optimism.

Great. After flogging for 10 years that software is eating the world and that hard sciences and physical world doesn't matter, a16z now is asking us to build? Color me surprised.

Very good question. I've been thinking about this for awhile. This is fairly common on the PE industry but I'm not aware of this happening in VC / startup world. OP, can you please post the links of websites that you mention list the SaaS companies please?

20 years ago, when I was a bright eyed graduate student, I was mesmerized by MEMS (micro-electro mechanical systems), which promised similar revolution. I learnt about 'artificial muscles', and MIT Technology Review even ran a cover issue on how MEMS will revolutionize everything. This article could have been written in the year 2000 except it would have mentioned MEMS then. Now there is no mention of it. I'm older and saner now. Still feels very much a academic pipe dream than real engineering. I dreamed of working with Kris Pister and now he is 20 years older. Another young professor at UPenn and Cornell is trying to get tenure....call me cynical but this too shall pass. Issues of toxicity in human body etc are huge...

Ah, where do I start. Two of my close relatives have schizophrenia, people whom I’ve known since they were born. They were both diagnosed around 19 and are now 29. In the last ten years we’ve tried many medications, hospitalizations, with little to no avail. I never understood the word curse when I was a kid. I read about it in stories and I had seen people curse each other. Living with schizophrenia is the definition of a curse. Lives wasted in an alternate reality. The lives of the care givers and family impacted terribly.

I grew up on less than $10 per month for all expenses, including food, clothing and shelter. Now I'm worth $2MM+ at age 40 and an executive at Silicon Valley. I also have an Ivy League MBA. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it does solve for basic anxiety that arises when you don't know where your next meal is going to come from. There are things in life that money can't solve for, such as genuine love of a person, mental health, kid's health, family ego clashes.