It’s hard to believe, but…

Ten years ago…

The first video was uploaded to YouTube.

Facebook, then just a year old, dropped “the” from its old URL “ thefacebook.com ” after acquiring “ facebook.com ” for $200K.

” after acquiring “ ” for $200K. An early prototype of an autonomous car completed the DARPA Grand Challenge for the first time.

The term “drone” meant a military weapon system.

Bitcoin and blockchain didn’t exist, and wouldn’t be created for three more years.

Android was a small startup that Google had just acquired.

There were 6.4 billion humans on Earth, only ~1 billion were online, and none of them had heard of Uber or AirBnb.

Today…

YouTube has more than a billion users who watch hundreds of millions of hours of video every day. Three hundred hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Facebook has 1.4 billion users from every country on Earth.

Every major car manufacturer is working on an autonomous model, and Google’s autonomous cars have logged over 1 million miles driving themselves.

Drones are now used by children, can be purchased at prices ranging from $50 to $1,500. The largest consumer drone company DJI (which was started in 2006) is valued at $10 billion.

Bitcoin and blockchain companies have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital and are poised to be potentially as disruptive as the Internet itself.

Google now has over 1 billion active Android users.

Today, there are close to 7.4 billion humans on Earth, and ~3 billion are now online.

Uber, which was started in 2009, is valued at over $40 billion, and AirBnb, started in 2007, valued over $20 billion.

These are only a few of the fun examples of exponential change from the last decade. The question is: what will the world look like a decade from now? In a few days, I will be releasing an article I wrote for the Huffington Post’s 10-year anniversary. It contains a few of my predictions for the next 10 years, and an explanation as to why I believe we are living in the most exciting time ever. Stay tuned…

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