A “futurist” episode of our podcast, Ahead of the Curve … the tech that will be making your life easier right around the corner … what’s required to be a successful hypergrowth investor
Are you ready for flying robo taxis?
No more traffic backups on the way to the airport. You’re there in 10 minutes…for about the price of an Uber.
Are you ready for smart homes (and apartments) that know exactly what you want, when you want it, and have it ready for you?
From self-dimming windows, to your morning coffee, to vacuuming, mopping, even lawnmowing, it’ll all be done for you – just as you program it.
Finally, are you ready for “remote” doctor visits in which you’ll upload your vitals from the comfort of your own home?
Your doctor will review your real-time health readings instantly and suggest treatment without you even getting off your couch.
If you’re not ready, this is your alert because all of this is coming.
***Best of all, it’s only about three years away, not decades
Recently, our hypergrowth specialist and the editor of Innovation Investor, Luke Lango, sat down with InvestorPlace’s CEO, Brian Hunt, for a special episode of the podcast, Ahead of the Curve.
For those unfamiliar, Ahead of the Curve focuses on “financial foresight, direct access to experts, and actionable investment ideas that can help you achieve financial freedom.”
In this particular episode, Brian and Luke dive into the technological advancements that are just a few years away.
As Brian says in the interview:
I like to see what the world could be like 50 years from now, but that’s too far away to be useful to me as an investor. It’s too theoretical.
You know, like teleportation. Great, but I can’t invest in that. Fun to watch, not fun to invest in.
So, I personally like three years, because it’s far enough away that we can get positioned as investors and give innovations time to change the world, and hopefully do very well with our investments.
In today’s Digest, let’s feature highlights from the podcast. What’s coming is not only exciting, it’s potentially lifechanging, capable of generating enormous wealth for you and your family.
For those of you with a few extra minutes, click here to check out the entire episode. It’s a fun, informative listen. And as the name implies, it will put you ahead of the curve in knowing what’s on the way – in both technology and the investment markets.
Let’s jump in.
***The amazing technologies that are right around the corner
Let’s pick up with Brian and Luke begin discussing flying robo taxis.
Brian: How about flying cars? Where are we with that technology? Where do you see the near future with that technology?
Luke: The big technological breakthrough there is eVTOL aircraft. That stands for electric, vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. They are basically silent, electric, fast, cheap, and compact helicopters.
Today, a helicopter is not a very good medium of transportation for the masses because it is exceptionally loud. It’s expensive to own one, or even hitch a ride on one.
They’re expensive to make. They aren’t very fuel efficient. So, they’re just not a great mode of transportation, except for exceptionally wealthy individuals. But these eVTOL aircrafts are a breakthrough.
There’s an iteration of eVTOLs that are a good mode of transportation for the masses. There are dozens of startups out there right now that are making these eVTOL aircrafts. Some of these startups have working prototypes.
(Below is an image of Joby’s founder along with its eVTOL.)
Luke: So Joby Aviation is planning to build a bunch of Verta ports across various major cities in the US that will transport people from these Verta ports, which will be located either near your home or near offices, and will fly you directly to the airport.
So, skip the Uber ride, skip the traffic, skip all that headache and hop in this private electric helicopter that will zoom you to the airport in five minutes or less, and will do so at the same cost of an Uber ride.
2024 is the projected launch date for these services…
VCs are pouring billions of dollars into this space. Even in the public markets, you’ve seen Joby Aviation come public, it’s been a success…
The fact that investment dollars are already flowing in means that you’re not too early. In fact, time is of the essence here, and you want to get in early on this trend, because investors are already looking to the future of flying cars as being something that’s going to unlock a tremendous amount of economic value for society.
***Let’s jump to the part of the podcast in which Brian and Luke touch on the intersection of technology and medical care
Brian: I have this dream that someday I will have an implantable health monitoring device that will monitor all the important things going on. That device will communicate with an AI doctor to analyze what’s going on, then recommend things that I do. You should eat more of this, eat less of this, workout more, workout less, all that stuff…
How far away are we from things like that? And what are the implications for the healthcare sector, and healthcare investing?
Luke: Yeah, so healthcare is an industry that is being dramatically revolutionized by technology. We believe the long-term future is basically a doctor in every home, where that doctor is an AI powered doctor.
The reality is that 95% of hospital visits are non-emergency situations. For those 95% of interactions, they can and will be, within the very near future, automated by virtualization and AI powered technologies.
The things we’re really excited about here are, first, on the hardware side of things – there’s a semiconductor driven revolution happening. Go into a doctor’s office or a hospital room, and look at the machines there. They look like they’re from 2005. They’re these massive, clunky machines. The reason is because these machines aren’t built on semiconductor chips.
If you think about the old days with computers, they were also massive. Then what happened is Intel and others, Qualcomm, figured out, “hey, we can miniature everything by putting it all on a semiconductor chip.” Boom, the miniaturization of computers happened and computers went from entire rooms to fitting in the palm of your hand.
That’s a semiconductor driven revolution in computing, we’re seeing something similar happening in healthcare. A company called Butterfly Network is leading this. They’re basically creating ultrasound on a chip technology to literally fit in the palm of your hand.
It has a little USB connection, you connect it to a computer, or a phone. You can do an ultrasound at home, and see what’s wrong. The data will show up on whatever you plugged into, your computer, or your phone, and boom, you don’t need to go to the hospital.
We think that’s just the very first domino to fall in this whole semiconductor miniaturization revolution of healthcare hardware. We think that’s going to happen across all hardware devices, which would democratize access to healthcare for a lot of people.
***We’ll begin to wrap up so that this Digest doesn’t grow too long
Jeff here.
What we’ve covered from the podcast barely scratches the surface of what Brian and Luke discussed. They also went into detail about electric vehicles, self-driving cars, AI digital assistance, and the Metaverse. Again, I encourage you to check out the entire podcast by clicking here. And for more from Luke on the technologies he tracks in Innovation Investor, click here.
The third and final section I’ll highlight today is a fun back-and-forth between Brian and Luke about the speed of technological breakthroughs, and how it relates to investing.
It’s a great reminder of what’s required of hypergrowth investors today. I’ll let this take us out.
Brian: You hit on something really important. With exponential progress really starting to take hold, our computers are getting so much faster and more powerful at the same time they’re getting cheaper.
The rate of change is so fast that you’ve got to have a big imagination and you’ve got to jump on these things quickly because they can blow up so, so quickly compared to the way the world operated 20 or 30 years ago.
Luke: I think you hit the nail on the head.
In order to be a successful hypergrowth investor in the 2020s, you can’t look at the world and see only what’s there now. You have to see what will be there.
The technological takeover of the world has become inevitable. It’s happening all around us. We know that it’s accelerating.
So, investors can’t look at the world and invest based only on what’s there today. You have to decide what to invest in based on what will be there in three-to-five years.
If you have the ability to do that, you will be successful as a hypergrowth investor. But if you don’t, you will get crushed by the folks that can do that, because imagination, creativity, and a desire to push the world forward is exactly what powers the success of venture capitalists and really good hypergrowth investors in the public markets.
Have a good evening,
Jeff Remsburg
