WeTech Berlin
The Market Is Far From Saturation, Says Insight Partners Director
Deven Parekh, managing director at the New York-based venture capital firm, spoke Thursday at Calcalist's WeTech Berlin 2020 conference
History was always defined by the tools we were using: the stone age, the bronze age, and now, the digital age, said Deven Parekh, managing director at New York-based venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. For example, Parekh said, Goldman Sachs employs more programmers than Facebook and 50% of Dominos Pizza's online sales are communicated via emojis. Parekh spoke Thursday at Calcalist's WeTech Berlin 2020 conference, held in collaboration with Israel's Bank Leumi and German real estate company Aroundtown Property Holdings PLC.
It is not a surprise that we see a significant rise in the market share of software companies, Parekh said. Historically, he said, experts have had a hard time predicting the market share of the software sector and earlier predictions got it wrong by more than 50%, he said. The reason, according to Parekh, is the rise of the software platforms, which made the products of software companies more broadly available. "If you were smart enough to predict that, you would've been able to buy shares in companies such as Salesforce, for example," he said. Parekh also mentioned the rise in tech initial public offerings (IPOs).
The question now is, what will happen in the next 20 years, and whether the tech industry and this growth are sustainable, Parekh said. "You can always talk about trends, but the reality is always more than numbers, and the market is far from saturation," he said. "Companies today are growing at a much faster pace, and current trends suggest this is going to last for a long time."
Parekh has led investments in companies such as Tumbler, Twitter, Media Mind, JD.com Inc., and ECI, has vast experience in mergers and acquisitions, and has been included in Forbes' prestigious Midas list five times. In 2016, Parekh was appointed by then-U.S. President Barack Obama to head the board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the U.S. government's development finance institution.
