wlamont

Is this still a day one company?

The decline may have a long tail.

I was also blown away at their low effective tax rate.

I remember when the first iphone was released in 2007. I had several friends working at Blackberry at the time and they were dismissive of the iphone as merely a "toy". I always quiped in response "who doesn't love toys?".

Had Blackberry taken the threat of the iphone more seriously, the smartphone market would look very different.

I have been using a System 76 Gazelle Pro since 2012 running either Ubuntu or Mint and I love it. They are solid laptops. The help center is very friendly and knowledgeable. I had one problem when I first got my machine and they handled it in about 10 minutes with a link to a new linux kernel.

If you were just starting out again what industry would you focus your efforts on now?

Recently a plethora of startups working on new nuclear energy technology have been created: Transatomic power, Flibe, Helion and UPower (to name a few). These startups, respectively, have technology based on molten salt reactors (MSR), new fuels (Thorium), or new modalities (small distributed scale and fusion). Most of these startups face a huge challenge (and capital requirement) to go from idea/concept to pilot/demonstration plant. As Chairman of Helion and UPower how do you see these new startups commercializing their technology? Will they require partnerships with existing utilities and what is the expected timeline?

Very insightful article from Ben. Although the conglomerates are not in vogue at the moment several conglomerates dominate the business world: GE, Siemens, etc... Actually I see a lot of parallels between Googles maturation and say GE's. Both started with a niche product but then diversified into more complex systems as they matured.

Agreed. The tax paying public now gets to share in the scientific results it has paid for.