Smartvu Ltd. CEO Richard Burry has been at the vanguard of e-commerce innovation and opportunity for more than three decades.
With broad experience in technology, management and business startups, the Portugal-based digital pioneer focuses on Internet businesses in sectors ranging from marketing and online search services to World Wide Web domain names, cryptocurrency, webcams and gaming.
Before starting Smartvu Ltd. in 2000, he led Web Krew S.A., an Internet development company specializing in SEO, online directories, web hosting, emails and website design and development.
Before venturing out on his own, he gained extensive experience as Director of PC Interactive Services for Shaw Communications. There, his responsibilities included the development and operation of a residential Internet service delivered to customers over high-speed cable modems. He managed sales, marketing, finance, technology, content development, installation, maintenance and customer support.
His avocations are as wide-ranging as his choice of investments. He enjoys poker, board games, sailing, travel, art, music, drones and American football. Recently Richard Burry took some time to discuss Internet entrepreneurship, in a conversation partially reprinted below.
Q: How have Internet investment opportunities changed over the past two decades?
Richard Burry: In 30-plus years the technology has really accelerated much more than anyone imagined, and moved into new and unexpected realms of invention. I picture myself back in 1995, logging onto the Web with a dial-up connection, downloading documents in slow motion. At the time, I knew Internet technology presented many exciting opportunities, but did I anticipate the iPhone, social media, YouTube or any of the various phenomena associated with the new platforms, from cat videos to Psy, from the Tide Pod challenge to whole new high-paying careers that were born, such as “Influencer”? I think this evolution surprised everybody.
There’s been one constant during this remarkable period of development, which is: The best place to position yourself for opportunities is on the ground floor. If you have the foresight or luck to see the genius in the young Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, or understand the importance of the computer chip industry, or notice the emergence of AI and cryptocurrency at the very early stages, there’s no end to what you can achieve.
Q: When exploring investment opportunities, what particular characteristics do you look for in a company?
Richard Burry: When I pursue promising investments, I look beyond the company to the people behind it. I look at the founder and the leadership team. Ideally, I get to know them personally; or at the very least I educate myself on their backgrounds and try to understand what drives them. Ambition and purpose in pursuit of a dream is much more important to me than technical facility. You can learn the skills, but you need that inward compulsion to create and achieve if you’re going to be a success in business. I also look at market sectors that are undiscovered, or even ignored, by big institutional investors. It’s even better when I find a company in a unique sector that is applying new innovations and ideas to the way things have traditionally been done in that industry or sector. I love to find pioneers who color outside the lines. They make great investment partners; and they’re wonderful, interesting people to be around as well.
Q: What impact do you foresee AI having over the next few years, for Internet businesses specifically as well as financial and labor markets?
Richard Burry: With AI, I really see no limit at all. No limit to the opportunities, and no limit to the potential. That’s the part of AI that also breeds apprehension, if we’re talking about its unlimited ability to improve itself over time. As with any seismic change in the global economy, there will be tremendous displacements and disruptions. Of course, disruption is another word for investment opportunity. It’s an aspect of the creative destruction that is the engine of progress. There’s a lot that should be done in the coming years to limit the “destruction” part of the term and maximize the creativity. Workers will be displaced, and the integrity of financial markets could be at risk if AI becomes adept at manipulating trends and emotions to generate profit. As a society, we’re going to need to be smart and vigilant with this exponentially advancing technology, but we have no choice but to integrate it into our companies, industries and economies.
Q: You’ve talked extensively about the promise of cryptocurrency. Do you see any limit to the opportunities in this sector?
Richard Burry: The success of cryptocurrency has been deeply satisfying in two ways: First, as an early booster of crypto, I endured years of teasing about my belief in this new exchange mechanism. There was a time that crypto buffs were stereotyped as either tin-foil-hat nuts or slackers who were looking for a shortcut to wealth. Many of these early doubters underestimated the suspicion many consumers have of fiat currencies issued by governments. For many people, crypto became a synonym for freedom. It offered privacy, and didn’t have a mountain of government debt undermining its value. It’s true that cryptocurrency is built on the ultimate intangible foundation — numbers — but it turns out that equations trump government promissory notes when it comes to trust. And the second reason that cryptocurrency’s success has been so gratifying to me is also the most basic: It has generated some pretty substantial returns over the years.
