Overview
Since we were founded a stone's throw away from Silicon Valley, we have a firsthand view of the very brave (and sometimes very crazy) individuals who are willing to create businesses based on new-to-the-world technologies. Unfortunately, it almost never works. The history of the tech industry is littered with groundbreaking inventions that raced out of the gate only to fall off a cliff.Throughout the existence of Jump, we've worked with technology companies to make the far-out seem close and intimate, and to commercialize cool inventions into successful businesses. Unless companies can show how a new technology solves a real need, performs dramatically better than existing products, and will fit into people's everyday lives, the most compelling ideas in the world never take off. Moreover, it's just as important to figure out how to roll out a new technology as it is to make it work or design it in an appealing form. The real trick is to create the roadmap from here to there.
Bill Gates puts it best: "We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next 10." What matters is winning just enough today to win big a few years down the road. The amazing inventions of the Stanford Research Institute and Xerox PARC never made a real market impact, but the Apple Macinotsh and Windows PC those inventions birthed did. The initial wave of PDAs like the Newton were commercial disasters but set the path for today’s booming smartphone market. Even the notoriously unsuccessful Segway scooter could one day re-emerge in a form that changes the way people move around cities. But only if someone connects that whizbang technology to the real lives of ordinary people. It’s what we enjoy most.
