Tej Kohli: The Six D’s show why we live in the age of the entrepreneur
Tej Kohli is the founder of the not-for-profit Tej Kohli Foundation whose ‘Rebuilding You’ philosophy supports the development of scientific and technological solutions to major global health challenges whilst also making interventions to rebuild people and communities around the world. Tej Kohli is also an impact investor who backs growth-stage artificial intelligence and robotics ventures through the Kohli Ventures investment vehicle.
Twitter @MrTejKohli.
My Kohli Ventures investment vehicle focuses on exponential growth opportunities that are derived from the chain reaction of rapid technological progression. We seek to directly back the founders of visionary growth-stage ventures in the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, biotech and esports.
Over the last decade we have experienced great successes as a direct result of having synthesised our investment philosophy from the precepts of the ‘Six D’s of Exponential Growth’ by Peter H Diamandis and Steven Kotler.
We live in times of incredible change. News can travel in an instant and arrive into the palm of our hands in any shade and colour of our choosing. Music, films, video games, communication and new knowledge are omnipresent on our 4G and 5G-connected devices.
Across all sectors, powerful technologies that were once only available to huge organizations are becoming accessible and affordable thanks to a rapid process of digitization. And the potential for entrepreneurs to disrupt industries, and for corporate giants to go extinct, has never been greater.
A century ago, ‘disruption’ meant devising a new product or service that people needed but didn’t yet have, and then finding a way to produce it with higher quality and lower costs than competitors. The barriers to entry were substantial, since to do this often required hiring hundreds of employees and then waiting for years to make a meaningful investment return.
But the chain reaction of rapid technological development means that new technologies are developing at exponential rates of change, and so the modern business and investment landscape has taken on a dramatically different look and feel even in just the last few years.
The structure of organizations is now changing forever too. Instead of employing thousands of people and using large physical plants, modern ventures are lean and focus on information technologies. They ‘dematerialize’ what was once physical and create new digital products from which they can derive new revenue streams within just a few weeks. In short, it no longer takes a huge corporation to make a significant global impact.
In short, we now live firmly in the age of the entrepreneur. The opportunities available for entrepreneurs are myriad and omnipresent. To see them one only has to open their eyes and view the world through the prism of the Six D’s. Technology is allowing entrepreneurs to disrupt traditional processes and businesses forever. This disruption is laced with opportunity for the kind of forward-thinking entrepreneurs and founders that Kohli Ventures has been backing. Our investment returns have been both rapid and substantial.
The ‘big secret’ to growing exponentially and being able to positively impact the lives of millions of people is in understanding the growth cycle of new and digital technologies. Peter H Diamandis and Steven Kotler identified that this growth cycle takes place in six key steps, which they called the ‘Six Ds’ of exponential growth: digitization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization (read more about them here >).
As more of the global economy is digitized, everything from medicine to manufacturing is being disrupted using technology. This is creating brand new exponential growth opportunities all around the world.
The Six Ds are more than just a road map showing what can happen when an exponential technology is born. They are evidence that a new zenith of technological development has ushered in the age of the entrepreneur.
Of course not every phase of exponential growth is easy. But the results give entrepreneurs the power to change the world in a faster and more impactful way than traditional businesses ever could have dreamed of before.
