New York based venture capitalist Fred Wilson has an interesting post on his AVC blog today. It’s a quick read, and typical for a lot of Fred’s posts, there’s a lot of valuable discussion in the comments from his readers.
The central analogy is that just as oil became the central magnet for wealth coming out of the industrial revolution, software is becoming the central magnet for wealth coming out of the technological revolution. Software here is loosely defined to mean software infrastructure, not just actual code. And as supporting evidence, Fred includes the balance sheet of some of the largest tech companies: Apple ($200bn), Microsoft ($110bn), & Google/Alphabet ($70bn).
As mentioned, the discussion in the comments expands on this idea, breaking down how the analogy holds up and ways in which it breaks down.