At TechDisrupt 2011 Vinod Khosla enthusiastically spoke about what he calls his “cool dozen” areas that excite him in the technology space. A few of them are: data reduction, big data+machine learning to focus on user preferences, apps (context-aware and mobile) that tap emotion, eduction, health, utilities, the democratization of publishing, interest graphs.
Points to ponder in some of the broad directions that VCs (Venture Assistant as Vinod calls) are headed:
Social Advertising: We have seen digital advertising evolve from banner ads to search ads and now social ads. But what is the definition of social and how can we turn user engagement into business? More importantly, how can we encourage people to do targeted advertising for us via their social channels (facebook,twitter, foursquare etc.)?
Clean Technology: How can we make existing mass production processes more not only better, faster and cheaper but also CLEANER !
