Five Things Tech: 8 New Technologies, Salesforce & NFT, Metaverse, AI Funding, SVB

You should read this. I wrote it just for you. ☝🏻

Let’s try something new here. ✌🏻

From now on, I’ll send out a newsletter every Saturday Morning about Five Things Tech. I’m doing this because I think there is so much going on and it is really hard to keep track of what’s important among this huge noise about all things tech and everybody talks about crypto, NFT, metaverse, XR, no-code, AI, cloud, quantum and what not. Reading and understanding lots of new tech stuff has been implicitly a part of my job description for more than 25 years in the tech industry. I like looking at and evaluating the latest trends, I like to play around with tech and explore new ideas. And I usually have a good gut feeling about what is going to be important. I like working with early-stage startups, because this is where the magic happens, this is where new ideas, tech and business plans meet.

So with this background, let me give you five interesting articles from the world of tech every Saturday.

🤙🏻

The “Next Big Thing”: 8 New Technologies That Will Change The World

Adrien Book gives a good and clear overview of some tech that will leave an impact in the next few years. I’m not always sure if I want this - or if this will happen in the next 5 years, 10 years or a lot later than that. Nevertheless, you should have an understand of what’s to come and this article is a good start. (Medium)

Salesforce Rolls Out Platform for Big Brands to Create NFT Loyalty Programs

NFT is the one aspect I could understand when everybody was talking about crypto and metaverse and all those hype topics associated with it. And I don’t mean all those get-rich-quick schemes with wannabe-artsy trading cards. The concept behind NFT is really fascinating and Salesforce moving into this direction clearly shows that this can be an important topic for companies who want to establish some sort of newfangled loyalty program for their customers. (decrypt)

Who Is Still Inside the Metaverse?

I think the metaverse is an amazing concept, but just not something anyone needs. And it is Mark Zuckerbergs big gamble to show analysts that he can find the next big thing for his company as the growth of facebook slows down, simply because almost everyone in the Western world is using facebook, Insta or Whatsapp. But Zuck’s version of the reality distortion field did not work, nobody, except for a bunch of geeks, wants to sit at home with weird goggles on to hang out in something that looks slightly better than Second live almost two decades ago. (NY Mag)

‘Let 1,000 Flowers Bloom’: A.I. Funding Frenzy Escalates

At my company NMA we started investing in AI companies seven years ago. The response from prospective customers was often “wow, that’s scary” and now that OpenAI has pushed ChatGPT out the door, people still think AI is scary, but are also fascinated. The result is that a ton of money gets thrown at anything AI and this will result in lots of stupid startup ideas and some really brilliant ones. This is how innovation works. (NY Times)

The Ugly Lessons of Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse

It’s always interesting to see that libertarians always cry for government intervention when their risky gambles don’t succeed. I think it makes sense that the government in the US and the UK took over SVB and thereby contained a possibly large-scale ripple-effect. But just like the financial crisis of 2008, all the things we learned in the last two weeks will be soon forgotten by greedy people in the financial sector. (Wired)

That’s it for the first edition of Five Things Tech. I hope you like it. Also, you might want to check out NMA Monday Alert - which will be in your inbox this Monday. So go ahead and subscribe this as well if you want to find out what we do at NMA - the premier hub for startup innovation in Europe!