“
Henrique Dubugras, the co-founder of Brex, told me he was most excited about companies focused on rebuilding insurance. Mario Schlosser, the co-founder of Oscar Health, pointed to the wealth of opportunities still left to revamp healthcare. Max Mullen, who co-founded Instacart, raved about the future of food; Max Levchin of Affirm and PayPal talked about the importance of “clean water, access to food, climate change, and improvement in education.” For Neha Narkhede of Confluent, it was “the consumerization of the enterprise,” meaning a bottom-up adoption of tools to make enterprise sales happen. Michelle Zatlyn, the co-founder of Cloudflare, was excited about the future of social networks. And on the life science and healthcare side, Arie Belldegrun of Kite Pharma was excited about cell therapy, while Nat Turner of Flatiron Health was keen on the application of data in “neurology, neurodegenerative disease, and cardiovascular diseases.” The most interesting response came from Tony Fadell, the co-founder of Nest. “I think it’s more important to look at the markets than spaces and industries,” he told me. Beyond Silicon Valley, big changes are happening in India, in Southeast Asia, and across Latin America. “These places are going through massive transitions, just like China has already. You need to pay attention to these new markets and see what unique problems you can solve for these markets. You always need to think in the context of the problems of the place you’re going after.
”
”