Paul Kedrosky
Dr. Kedrosky is a venture capitalist, media personality, and entrepreneur. He is a sought-after speaker; an analyst for CNBC television; a columnist for TheStreet/RealMoney; the editor of Infectious Greed, one of the best known business blogs on the Internet; and he is frequently quoted in major publications around the world.
Most recently he has been the Executive Director of the William J. von Liebig Center in San Diego, California. Using an innovative seed capital program, the Center catalyzes the commercialization of technologies from the internationally-ranked University of California, San Diego.
Dr. Kedrosky is a co-founder and managing partner at SK Ventures, an early-stage venture firm. He has also been a sell-side equity analyst. Dr. Kedrosky has more than two dozen investments in drones, mobile, software as a service, and other areas. He has sold companies to Cisco, Twitter, and many others. He is currently on the board of Marqui Corporation, a marketing automation software firm, as well as Dabbledb, a hosted data management company.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Kedrosky founded the technology equity research practice at HSBC James Capel. As a highly-ranked technology equity analyst, transactions with which he was involved created in excess of a billion dollars in public market value. Dr. Kedrosky was one of the first analysts to cover Internet companies as well as making early and timely calls in networking and communications.
Dr. Kedrosky has also been a successful entrepreneur. In 1999, he financed and launched one of the first hosted blogging services, GrokSoup. The service grew to more than a thousand subscribers. Relatedly, he wrote for Harvard Business Review what is widely regarded as the seminal article on dark matter and syndication technologies.
Dr. Kedrosky is a sought after media personality. He has hosted a television program, "Profiles on Innovation," that is available on cable in the U.S., as well as on the Web (at www.ucsd.tv). He has written influential columns for Business 2.0 magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Harvard Business Review, and others. He has also appeared on many media outlets, including CNN, PBS Newshour, ABC Nightline, and the New York Times, and he can be seen frequently on CNBC's "On the Money." He maintains one of the best known technology, venture capital, and finance blogs at http://paul.kedrosky.com.
Dr. Kedrosky currently divides his time between La Jolla, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
Here’s why finance is about to be disrupted
O'Reilly's Next:Money event helps business leaders understand the fundamental shifts reshaping finance.
Learn more about Next:Money, O’Reilly’s conference focused on the fundamental transformation taking place in the finance industry.
Editor’s note: We’re approaching an inflection point in all things “money” — currency, transactions, markets, and capitalism itself. Fundamental changes in the financial industry, driven by technology but with implications for every business and government, are beginning to manifest, bringing both disruption and opportunity. We created O’Reilly’s new conference, Next:Money to help business leaders understand and act on this shift. Below, investor and entrepreneur Paul Kedrosky lays out the forces and patterns that are reshaping the financial industry.
Finance has the three main characteristics of an industry likely to be transformed by technology:
- It traffics in bits, not atoms.
- Its services are often delivered remotely.
- There is little need for human contact.
Unlike other sectors with these characteristics — e.g., media, advertising, and travel services — finance hasn’t been disrupted. Despite huge technological change and a series of financial crises, the league table of the largest financial firms today, both in the U.S. and around the world, remains much the same as it has always been.
Granted, the $1.2-trillion U.S. financial services industry isn’t homogenous. Its main components — banks, brokers, asset managers, markets, payment networks, insurers, and credit card companies — are very different, and have seen widely varying degrees of technology-induced change. In no sense, however, is this industry as transformed by new companies and new business models as one would expect, given its disruption-ready characteristics.
So, why haven’t entrepreneurs transformed finance? There are (at least) five reasons: Read more…