Category: tech investing

• Why companies are hiring sci-fi writers to imagine the future

  Katie Underwood interviewed me for a Pivot Magazine feature on how business leaders are commissioning science fiction that challenges them to think differently about the future: In recent years, major multi-national companies like Nike, Google, Apple, Ford and Visa, and governmental bodies like NATO and the French army, have all enlisted the services of sci-fi…

• What sci-fi can tell us about the future

  Tom Standage wrote a thought-provoking article about the feedback loop between science fiction and real world tech for The Economist. He happened to quote from an essay I wrote a few years back: “Writing in Harvard Business Review in 2017, Eliot Peper, a novelist, argued that science fiction is valuable ‘because it reframes our perspective…

• How science fiction influences tech entrepreneurs

  Inc. interviewed me about the feedback loop between speculative fiction and real world innovation: https://www.inc.com/sean-wise/the-founders-of-apple-google-microsoft-all-do-this-1-thing-regularly-you-should-too.html “To make sense of the world around us, to catch a glimpse of underlying reality, to notice those invisible forces, we must step outside ourselves. Reading is one way to do that.” Fun fact: Sean Wise, the author of the…

• Speaking at SXSW: How Fictional Futures Influence Tech

  I’m speaking at SXSW this week on a panel with Kevin Bankston, Malka Older, and Tim Fernholz where we’re going to discuss how fictional futures influence tech: https://schedule.sxsw.com/2019/events/PP86251 “What does it mean when many of the richest and most powerful people on the planet—like Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Jeff Bezos—think how they think and…

• A reading guide to building the future

  I wrote an essay for TechCrunch that explores the literary culture of Silicon Valley. It digs deep into the feedback loop between books and innovation and turns up weird gems along the way. Think of it as a reading guide to building the future: https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/16/the-best-fiction-for-building-a-startup/ “Every year, Bill Gates goes off-grid, leaves friends and family…

• How to build a consulting practice

  Give away your best ideas via blog posts, podcasts, talks, books, conversations, etc. When people ask you for help implementing them, charge a lot and only work with clients who inspire you and for whom you can make a big impact. Complement with what I help clients do, the reason most successful people have no…

• Why Business Leaders Need to Read More Science Fiction

  My first-ever piece for Harvard Business Review explores how science fiction can help us overcome false assumptions. Science fiction reveals how fragile the status quo is, and how malleable the future can be. Science fiction isn’t useful because it’s predictive. It’s useful because it reframes our perspective on the world. This is a topic very close…

• Speaking at GamesBeat Summit

  Next week I’ll be speaking at GamesBeat Summit in Berkeley. They even wrote up a nice story about it here. This is what we’ll cover: The pace of innovation is accelerating. Technological revolutions that once took millennia to play out now take decades, years, months. At the same time, science fiction has rocketed from nerdy…

• Watch my Google Talk

  Last month, Google invited me to come give a talk about Cumulus. They filmed the entire event and you can watch it right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1mwp0uk2cQ&feature=youtube We discussed science fiction, creative process, social impacts of technology, venture capital investing, and predicting the future. I’ve always been amazed by the busy intersection of speculative fiction, engineering, and…

• 3 tips for building a startup investment portfolio

  My friend Josh Maher (@joshmaher) is a prolific angel investor, President of Seattle Angel, and author of the new book STARTUP WEALTH: How the Best Angel Investors Make Money in Startups. STARTUP WEALTH delivers engaging interviews with early-stage investors in Google, Invisalign, ZipCar, Uber, Twilio, Localytics, and other successful and not so successful companies. It outlines how an amazing…