The Next Billion Dollar Disruption. You Read About It Here First

If there’s anything true about high tech, it’s that the big fortunes are made when a new technology disrupts an existing industry. The money to be made is greatest when 1) the industry being disrupted is bureaucratic and inefficient, and 2) the new technology transcends, rather than merely automates, the previous processes.

Early in my career, I lived through and participated in, one of the biggest disruptions of all time: desktop publishing. Within ten years, photo-offset printing setups that cost millions of dollars each were replaced by PCs and laser printers. Entire job categories and companies disappeared. Millions lost their jobs but entrepreneurs made untold billions of dollars.

While I built my career riding that wave, I was too young and inexperienced to start my own company until the revolution was over. Now, as I see another, even more amazing technology about to massively disrupt another hidebound, inbred industry, I’m past the point where I want to start my own company. Too much damn work. (I’m a lazy S.O.B., truth be known.)

So I’m going to share with all you readers what I absolutely know is about to happen. I say “absolutely” because entirely by accident I’m uniquely positioned to see the disruption coming and uniquely qualified to explain how it’s going to happen. And, strangely perhaps, it has nothing whatsoever to do most of the stuff I write about in this column.

So let’s get started but, bear with me and be patient, because I’m going to explain this in my own way and without trying to package the concept with a nice, neat bow. Put on your thinking cap.