Marc Andreessen, writing for the WSJ last week:
Today’s stock market actually hates technology, as shown by all-time low price/earnings ratios for major public technology companies. Apple, for example, has a P/E ratio of around 15.2—about the same as the broader stock market, despite Apple’s immense profitability and dominant market position. . .
But it’s clear that
. . .we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.
I agree. It’s an odd disconnect I’ve observed, too. It seems like the top stories run by most financial news sites revolve around software in some way, yet Wall Street hasn’t come to terms with it.
Who knows where our increasingly imaginary economy will take us, but the upshot I take way today is: Teach your kids to make software. Their competitors will know how.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I’ve thought about this exact situation recently. I think the biggest reason for the lack of respect is that computer have been around for over half a century so while innovative things are happening, they simply aren’t revolutionary.
You might like to think that the iPad is revolutionary, but it really is just the intersection of the laptop and the smartphone. You might like to think the smartphone was revolutionary, but it was just the intersection of the phone and the computer.
Something like the car was not the intersection of anything. It was a one-way move from horse drawn carriages to gas powered automobiles. Flight was the same thing: a move from the ground to the air.
I sure wish I knew what the next non-intersecting leap was going to be…