OATV – O’Reilly AlphaTech looking for the next alpha geek company
Excellent post by Bryce from OATV. OATV is O’Reilly’s VC firm, they’ve invested in DIY & open source hardware companies like the Chumby and Instructables. Some makers, hackers and biz owners ask us about funding, we usually suggest they talk to OATV (assuming there’s a match)…
When Tim, Mark and I were laying out our plans for OATV we began with a foundational belief- the technology that ends up being the most disruptive will come from hobbyists, hackers and alpha geeks. This belief stems from nearly 30 years of Tim watching and participating in multiple waves of massive technology transformation- from the early days of open source and the advent of the web to location aware technologies and the DIY movement. Each began with hackers having fun…
So how do we turn what we’re seeing from the alpha geek community into actionable investment themes? We look at what these hackers do in their spare time then try to find possible connections between them and any underlying trends they’re trying to expose. For instance, what do these Kinect hacks have in common with something like Google’s self driving car? They could be pointing to a trend among alpha geeks of exploring machine vision. If so, we ought to look at what immediate investment opportunities may be available directly in the field; but also, what pieces of infrastructure need to be in place for this trend to be fully realized at scale.
Its signal like this we watch at OATV when formulating our own investment themes. And, its this type of signal that aspiring entrepreneurs should look to when synthesizing what the future is going to look like for their next venture.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
