Today’s guest is one of my favorite follows, and the reason I started following him is because in the old days everybody linked to everybody. That’s how the internet just worked. To get smart we linked, we shared, we discovered. Luckily I discovered Horace. He understood Apple. He studied and wrote about the company and helped me stay with Apple, not from talking specifically about the stock, but writing about what made Apple great. Horace now runs one of the best twitter streams, with a podcast arm, centered around micro mobility. If you like smart people and you like stuff that will actually help you make money, even though he’s not talking specifically about stocks, Horace will be your man. I hope you enjoy this episode, and you can be sure Horace will be a recurring guest here on Panic with Friends.

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Guest: Horace Dediu

Profile: Founder of Asymco

Where to Find Him: LinkedIn, Twitter

What’s Horace Panicked About?: Apple’s earnings.

The Big Ideas:

Horace spent time deconstructing Apple. And through Apple, he started looking ahead at the entire tech space, trying to figure out what was relevant and what the future was going to be. He spent ten years doing that and eventually forked into doing micro mobility. In fact, Horace coined the term micro mobility. He created a conference, a podcast, and another newsletter, as well as joined Relay Ventures to help with strategy. 

He hasn’t given up looking at Apple, and thinks in many ways his two passions will converge at the intersection of the future of transportation and computation. And it’s not necessarily all cars. In fact, Horace is betting it won’t be all cars. Part of his research is looking at Big Tech like Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc, and figuring out to what extent they’ll participate in mobility.

Show Notes:

• (00:40) – Intro
• (05:06) – Welcome Horace
• (07:00) – Writing on the mobile industry
• (10:40) – Working at Nokia
• (12:46) – Making smartphones for the masses
• (14:18) – The battle between Microsoft and Nokia
• (17:47) – Apple and the iPod
• (20:38) – Horace starts blogging
• (24:33) – Rumors of the Apple “car”
• (26:02) – Communications is a commodity
• (30:08) – 2008 Steve Jobs conference call
• (33:38) – Humility as a business model
• (39:05) – Wrapping up
• (42:24) – Closing thoughts

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