The social media space is pretty ripe for disruption says tech investor Geoff Lewis. Lewis likes to invest against the grain, what he calls counter-narrative, and is actively looking at startups in that sector. Lewis says that there has been a lot of noise from regulators but that users are still using social media products. He says that thus far you haven’t seen any sort of mass user revolt.
Geoff Lewis, the founder of Bedrock Capital and an early tech investor in many companies including Lyft, recently discussed the future of social media and more on CNBC:
You Haven’t Seen a Mass Social Media User Revolt
The social media space is pretty ripe for disruption. There’s always this trade-off between privacy and communications and so we want as users and consumers to be able to communicate with our friends and to be connected, but we also want our privacy.
Then there’s this question of does the privacy thing ever get shifted too far to a point where people revolt? Thus far you haven’t seen any sort of mass user revolt. A lot of the noise has been in the markets with regulators, but the users are still using the product.
It’s a Narrative Violation to Invest in Social Media
I actually think it’s a narrative violation to be doing things in social media today as a start-up and what we’re focused on at Bedrock is investing in these companies that are counter-narrative. So I think the idea of investing in a social media business today, especially early stage as a venture capitalist, is very unfashionable.
So it’s something that we’d be very up for and have been looking at some new companies in that sector.