I have always been on the lookout for the next big thing. Projects which represent the forefront of innovation and technology. This is not just about ventures being financially advantageous, but also of great benefit to society.
While a lot of investors choose to focus on projects which are of tangible benefit to society, such as the environment or education, it’s sometimes more exciting to back ventures for which the potential returns are yet unknown. Indeed for which many of the valuable applications of the technology are yet unknown. To quote Nassim Teleb, the ‘unknown unknowns’. In some cases we are able to expose ourselves to benefits that seem possible but are yet unfathomable, alongside those which are more obvious.
For example, Maughan Capital recently invested in Sen, a space video streaming company which aims to democratise space (and more importantly information about earth) by providing independent, real-time, and accessible satellite information to help us understand and mitigate some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
An initiative which began in 1990, when its founder and CEO Charles Black was just 18, Sen Corporation was born out of the vision that a space news network could gather news and information about space and broadcast it to customers. The idea was that satellites could go on manufacturing satellites so that the business could forever create an electronic version of the universe.
As a humanitarian initiative, Sen aims to inform people about the reality of our existence in space, giving people videos of our own Earth, as well as other worlds, and providing multi-world data, analytics, and unique new perspectives for humanity. The company has explored deploying camera technology on and around the Moon, and is looking to Mars as its next destination for multi-world data. Additionally, it hopes to be able to publish its own software to analyse the data it captures to make it useful for policymakers seeking to derive insights from beyond into natural disasters.
Sen’s vision is to address the scarcity of data and awareness of large scale environmental and human events that affect hundreds of millions of people each year, to provide a new media which empowers humanity to see both the evolution of the planet and the story of our exploration of space as we become a multi-world democracy. It is crucial that organisations like Sen are given capital at the make or break stages of research and development, to allow their innovative ideas and projects to become reality.
Innovation is rarely a linear progress, demanding much in the way of trial and error. Just because an initial version of something fails, it doesn’t mean that the whole idea should be abandoned altogether. Initial experiments are often prone to failure, which can be costly to the unproven entrepreneur. I know this first-hand having taken a few tries to launch my own first successful business – it is so important to persist when the answer isn’t immediately apparent.
A similar venture I have been proud to back is a crypto-currency trading platform. At the time this might have seemed pie in the sky, but crypto-exchanges are fast coming to represent the future of modern finance. Just as Sen seeks to democratise space, crypto-currency trading platforms seek to democratise finance, making it easier for individuals to take control of their finances from the confines of traditional banking systems. Now, they are to be found all over the world, with India’s largest exchange reaching unicorn status this week at a valuation of $1.9 billion.
If necessity is the mother of invention, then capital must be the fuel that allows that invention to blossom. Many good ideas do not take much to turn into great ideas, and the greatest ideas are the ones which change the world. Maughan Capital is proud to put innovation at the core of its investment strategy, always on the lookout for promising ideas and initiatives which have the potential to become world changing – in the belief that by helping projects which have the potential to change the world, we can truly change the world for the better.
