Focus on the Latest Technology
—“The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed.”
William Gibson
—“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Alan Kay
 While the future is and will continue to be full of surprises, there are a number of
well calculated moves that can help anticipate its general possibilities. Among these, of key importance is gaining an understanding of the times we are living in. Revolutions are happening all around us. We live in a time of breath-taking discoveries, convergent and emergent technologies, and an ever-accelerating unfolding of new trends. Conditioned as such, the market place of the 21st century has rewritten the rules of investment. Many of the long term business structures of the past have proved antiquated amidst the blistering pace of globalization, the power of networks, and the ingenuity of innovation.
 At Link Capital Group (“LCG”), we can help our investors float in the flood of information, keep up with all that is happening and ultimately get ahead of the waves before they break. By having our finger on the pulse of emergent technologies, by being mindful of the immediate challenges and prospects of any new trends, we are uniquely qualified to bridge the diverse realms of innovation, navigate constellations of new ideas, and relate in massively parallel fashion to a broad spectrum of opportunities.
Recent years have born witness to innumerable advances that have exponentially accelerated the pace of technology growth. Failure to recognize the true nature of these exponential growth trends and their explosive non-linear capacity would prove catastrophic when formulating even a short term plan of investment in the high tech sector. Never before has the creation, production, distribution and adoption of new technologies been so blindingly fast as today. Startups, once looking at a business plan whose arc took years to execute, are finding that those years are quickly being reduced to months and months to weeks. Today, that which is first and fastest out of the starting gate has a significant advantage and we must reassess the traditional distinctions between angel investors, venture capital, and hedge funds. The time required for a lab prototype to become a major commercial product is drastically shrinking. These rapid stages of maturation are causing the technology frontier to expand in every direction.
 At LCG, we know how to gauge the thrust of these technologies. We foresee the cross-pollination between many new emergent fields such as nanotechnology, genetics, alternative/green energy, robotics, and information technology. We know how to harness the power of networks and to create the synergies that fuel the innovation economy. We can help our investors to reap the benefits of globalization as we not only ride but to an extent drive the waves of budding enterprise, new markets, and models for monetizing high tech.
Some examples of trends we closely monitor are:
Web 3.0 
Haptics
Massively Multiplayer Online Video Games and Virtual Worlds
Advanced Communications
Solar Energy
Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technology
Advanced Batteries
Biotechnology (Genetics, Stems Cells etc.)
Security Devices
Robotics
Social Networking Solutions
Nanotechnology
Meta-materials (Materials Science)
Data-storage and Computer Memory
Smart Fabrics
Software
E-learning
Photonics
Quantum Computing
Consider that:
 —Information technology now doubles in volume every year
—eCommerce has already well exceeded $1 trillion dollars annually
—Medical technology, now married to information technology, also doubles in volume every year
—Power generation from solar energy doubles every two years
—Brain scans have doubled in their resolution every year
Moreover, we find that these doubling rates are themselves accelerating!
Amongst predictions for the near future (5 to 7 years) are:
—another billion plus people joining the global economy
—widespread use of gene-sequences wherein a human genome once costing $billions and requiring over 10 years to sequence will be done for under $100 in about four minutes
— $80 trillion in wealth will be added to the global market place
—nanotechnology will be a $trillion industry
These trends will impact every level of the global economy. Business will never be the same. Much of the conventional thinking is breaking down because of a lack of imagination and anticipation of future possibilities of technology, as well as a general complacency about what worked in the past. LCG brings to its investors a network of collaborative partners who can act as both search light and laser beam of foresight into the investment opportunities of today and tomorrow. Fueled with a passion for adaptation and improvisation, LCG encompasses the unique plasticity required for the investments of a novel economic world.
The future is closer than one may think. 
Quotes and citations:
“The rate of paradigm shift (technical innovation) is accelerating, right now doubling every decade.” Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near p.25
“The power (price-performance, speed, capacity, and bandwidth) information technology is growing exponentially at an even faster pace, now doubling about every year.” Ray Kurweil, The Singularity is Near p.25
“In the East Asian and Pacific region, the number of people living in extreme poverty went from 470 million in 1990 to 270 million in 2001, and is projected by the World Bank to be under 20 million by 2015.” Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near p.99 Singularity
“There has been smooth exponential growth in the amount of DNA sequence data that has been collected. A dramatic recent example of this improving capacity was the sequencing of the SARS virus, which took only thirty-one days from the identification of the virus, compared to more than fifteen years for the HIV virus.” Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near p.74
“Spatial and temporal resolution of brain scanning is doubling every year.” TED lectures Ray Kurzweil Feb 2005
“.03% of sun’s light would cover our projected needs in 2030.” Kurzweil TED lectures Feb 2005
“Yet as powerful as information technology is today, we will make another billion-fold increase in capability (for the same cost) over the next 25 years.” Ray Kurzweil, “Making the World a Billion Times Better,” Washingtonpost.com, April 13, 2008
“Now that we can model, simulate and reprogram biology just like we can a computer, it will be subject to the law of accelerating returns, a doubling capacity in less than a year. These technologies will be more than a thousand times more capable in a decade, more than a million times more capable in two decades.” Ray Kurzweil, “Making the World a Billion Times Better,” Washingtonpost.com, April 13, 2008
“80 Trillion dollars in new economic growth world wide by 2015.” James Canton, The Extreme Future p.54
“Nanotechnology $10-20 billion today by 2015 $1 trillion,” James Canton, The Extreme Future p.55
“So [it took] less than 5 months from a prototype in my lab to [become] a major commercial product,” Johnny Lee TED lectures March 2008
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