Why innovation isn’t dead in Silicon Valley, according to this tech expert | Washington Post

See The end of the beginning for a video of the full (~24-minute) Benedict Evans presentation

"In another part of his presentation, Evans noted that well-known technology companies that launched in the late nineties and early 2000s, such as Google, Facebook, Yelp or Zillow, have focused on indexing massive amounts of information and presenting it to people in more efficient ways.

Now, he said, a new crop of startups has expanded to delivering services on top of that information-indexing. If Zillow provided real estate listings and comparison shopping, five-year-old startup OpenDoor will buy and sell your house for you, Evans noted in an interview. If Yelp provided a directory of local businesses, today any number of food marketplace apps will give you a similar restaurant search experience - and then deliver the food right to your door. Airbnb isn’t just indexing homes for travelers and Uber isn’t just indexing a directory of cars; they are using the Internet-enabled, location-aware smartphone to create new types of transactions and value in the physical world. Even more recently, startups are now becoming insurers, lenders, and credit providers. Not long ago they would have merely organized financial information."

Why innovation isn’t dead in Silicon Valley, according to this tech expert | Washington Post