data points in terms of the influence of successful technology entrepreneurship.
There's also second order effects.
Once you've created a highly successful technology company,
that has all sorts of downstream effects.
So for example Google, after it did its IPO, initial public offering,
it spawned a number of individuals who were quite wealthy who then became
angel investors, that is, individuals who were making private and
individual investments in a host of other companies as well, as well known,
the PayPal Mafia, in which executives,
middle managers and even engineers at the old PayPal
then went on to really become investors,
founders and other key executives of other great companies.
And, so I don't have to mention Peter Reed Hoffman.
These are all known and well celebrated ash mores that all fit in this mold.
If you think about the technology life cycle, you could
capturize the adoption curve with this typical s shaped check adoption curve.
There are three distinct patterns associated with this curve.
In the beginning, there's a quite a bit experimentation.
Experiments don't go right, you put in a lot of effort
without a lot of progress that explain rather shallow era ferment.
Then things suddenly click into place,
you're able to come up with a design that appeals to the mainstream of the market,
you get network effects that appeals to the mainstream.
That really makes a product or service much more valuable,
because of the size of the installed base.
Think about Facebook, which is much more valuable just because
all of your other friends are on the network.
That leads to this period of take-off.
And then finally, there's a saturation point, whether because you've tapped out
the social network, the people that your product or
service could be addressable towards, or there's physical limitation.
The wind won't blow any faster, so your sailboat is fundamentally.
Constrained by the physical limitation of the sale.
And so this is a typical pattern, in which technology evolves in commercial space.
Now, there's some challenges associated with those transition points from the era
ferment to the takeoff period.
And that particular transition point is really trying to appeal to the mainstream.
You could develop a product or service that's very niche.
That really appeals only to the early adopters or the early innovator,
but that's not going to be good enough to really cross the chasm,
as the well-known book by Jeffrey Moore is titled.
To really appeal to the mainstream, and tap in to the,