“Market potential for cellular communications looks really limited.” (1985)
Next time, you feel inadequate for not doing your job right, just remember that McKinsey once included the above quote in a report to AT&T. And yes, AT&T paid for it: millions upfront for the report of course, but even more in the long run as the company missed the one of the biggest evolutions in communications infrastructure since mobile network coverage first started.
Studying the initial mobile revolution provides some illuminating insights. The first true network capable of handling mobile calls was created in the first decade of the 20th century: the reason? Cars. Personal mobile vehicles changed the way people lived their lives and broke down physical barriers which a millennium before would be unheard of. People needed to be able to talk on the go, so spearheaded by Ericsson and AT&T, the US and Europe enabled a generation of stressed-out CEO to do their business from their car, without dropping communication as they drove. Not everyone could afford it, but it worked.
Nearly a century later, enter Pollen: the latest creation of Anthony Levandowski, into a decadeslong effort to bring automated vehicles to market: his current company Pronto.ai has created solutions allowing people to transform entire fleets of trucks into AVs, controllable from your mobile device. Well, an elusive piece of building this AV business has been the lack of reliable, cheap network coverage. AVs will use multiple exabytes of data by 2024 but are uneconomical because of high data transfer prices. The Pronto team’s solution? Let’s build a cheaper network from scratch with a radically different approach than all the TelCos out there.
Pollen just announced their seed round yesterday: while numbers are confidential, the story is very clear: their emergence marks a clear maturation of the DeWi industry And this is why:
(If you can’t see the below pictures, try pressing “load content” at the top of your email)
A lot of giddy-eyed folk likely read this and thought, “this feels like the next Helium” To them I say: Helium was a generational project for its subversion of the restricting and inefficient telecom framework we’ve had for years, and it will live in the minds of telecom players for time to come. Pollen is far earlier, and there are a lot more variables around its evolution that introduce significant uncertainty.
One interesting outcome of this experiment will in organizational design: does Pollen’s centralized model scale faster than Helium’s decentralized one? Obviously the comparison isn’t apples to apples, but we suspect when a company’s goal is fast and targeted execution and rapid growth, centralized systems may initially do the job better. But this too is unclear and is a great natural experiment.
As always, the slides presented here are available on request from: moneromahesh@protonmail.com. Please reach out with questions/ideas.
A special thanks to @Danconia_Crypto who helped me write this from the start.
A BIG thanks to all of the following people/anons, who were beyond helpful in providing great feedback. @Richhomiecon @Jplats @DeWiGo and a few more that preferred to keep their pseudonyms anonymous here.
Disclaimer: Neither this presentation nor anything in it shall form the basis of any contract or commitment. This presentation is not intended to be relied upon as advice to investors or potential investors and does not take into account the investment objectives, financial situation or needs of any investor