DisruptFilm Summit: Inventing the Future with Andy Chung

Andy Chung spoke about the delicate task of finding the next thing that can become huge at the DisruptFilm Summit in Park City, Utah. He is a partner at Khosla Ventures, which has six investing partners and $3 billion under management. They have a $300 million seed fund for high-risk, higher-return experiments and a $18 million main fund for 50% sustainability, 50% in IT and consumer health.

Chung was a restaurant cashier at age five, went to Harvard and Wharton, and is now interested in developing transformative companies in sustainability, mobility, education, health and future technologies at Khosla Ventures.

He talked about how forecasters try to predict the future. Chung said forecasting is like having a monkey throw darts. Forecasting is usually wrong, but they still continue to do it.

He showed advice from experts in the past. If those “experts” were to be believed, airplanes and iPhones would never have been created. Entrepreneurs should go against these predictions and try new things they are passionate about.

Find the Black Swans of ideas. If they work, they can change the course of humanity. The more disruptive a technology is, the more exciting it is for a VC to invest in.

You also have to think big and not be afraid to fail. Simple propositions, irrational emotion pull, antithesis of incumbents, unpredictable upsides, industry-toppling potential and rock stars rise above the crowd and noise.

Khosla Ventures has invested in Square, Jawbone, AliveCar, and Wattpad. Wattpad targets teenage girls with an emotional tie to bands. This emotional tie keeps the teenages coming back for more. For the band, the interaction is also more engaging.

These companies were bold in tackling new challenges in their markets.

AliveCar provides a low cost EKG option for the home. During a doctor’s visit to take an EKG that takes 10 minutes, you hope something shows up, or you have to wait another three months for another appointment. AliveCar measures the heart beat of the wearer and logs it for the doctor and patient to see. It is 90% accurate, and the iPhone can text a family member to take the patient to the hospital if something unusual is discovered.

Chung hesitated to predict the future, but gave us his insights on which industries will likely see new innovations.