Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corporation, has died at 94. It's hard to express Gordon’s impact in ushering in an era where microchips are in everyday devices everywhere, from laptops to phones to children’s toys. He was a rare individual who saw the future. When I met Gordon years ago, we talked about Moore's Law: his idea that the number of transistors on a chip would double every 2 years. His prediction proved correct for decades, enabling exponential advancements.
My talk with Gordon echoed for years. I saw that the best inventions in my lifetime relied on the chip improvements that Gordon predicted, coupled with other innovation trend lines, or experience curves, acting in concert. The ubiquity of laptops required massive advances in displays, storage, and power management. The iPhone harnessed upgrades in camera optics, networking chipsets, glass fabrication, and speakers; each category had its own distinct “Moore's Law.” Individually, the impact of such “Laws” may not be as potent and obvious as Gordon’s, but Apple’s ability to create wildly successful products is, in part, related to how they matched such advances to create winning combinations. Predictable experience curves united in novel ways create unpredictable outcomes.
At 1955 Capital, we look at similar “Laws” to understand how their interactions can create revolutionary breakthroughs. In solar, Swanson’s Law observes that solar module price drops 20% for every doubling of total volume. In LED lighting, Haitz’s Law states that cost per lumen drops by 90% when light generated per LED increases by 20X. From batteries to optics, from materials to genomics, there are “Laws” that guide existing industries on how their field may evolve, but also give hints to founders and investors on how new ones arise.
Take surgical robotics. Many robots in the market use components invented pre-2000, when the FDA approved the daVinci. Today's startups are rethinking the arms and actuators, cameras, communication systems, guidance software, and AR interfaces in these medical marvels. Each element follows a “Law” where predictable improvements on cost, size, or performance occur. What no expert can predict is what happens when multiple trend lines are successfully harnessed together.
At 1955 Capital, we’ve invested in this virtuous cycle. We were Series A investors in Noah Medical, recently cleared by the FDA for its robotic-navigated bronchoscopy system a year after raising $150M. We’ve worked with Harvard University to launch a robotics company, Project 1985, that can fabricate complex micro-scale devices to dramatically reduce the size of arms and actuators. What surgical possibilities arise when the improvements enabled by these startups intersect with the “Moore’s Laws” of other components? No one knows, but I’m excited to find out.
Gordon, thanks for your contributions to humankind.
How Gordon Moore Helped Shape My View on Innovation