early google employeesEarly Googler

Think back to the 1990s before Google launched. Finding relevant, accurate information online was impossible. 

That's where we are in the mobile era — in a pre-Google Pagerank place where great mobile apps get buried and there isn't much rhyme or reason to the ones that do break through the clutter.

John Lilly, a partner at venture capital firm Greylock, explains how early we are in mobile. He wrote an article on Medium citing Andreessen Horowitz's Benedict Evans:

"[Mobile] is in a ‘pre-pagerank’ phase where we lack the right tools and paths to find and discover content and services efficiently.”

Additionally, Lilly believes mobile is a much larger opportunity than the PC web. Many more people are connecting to the web via mobile devices. They're also connecting more frequently than they ever did on desktops.

"Much of the content & services & connections is all locked up by the big, sophisticated players. So data is more fragmented, more separate. And less mash-uppable," Lilly writes. "So we got apps, and daily/hourly engagement with billions of people. But we haven’t figured out how to sort it yet. Haven’t figured out how to find & share." 

In other words, there's a ton of opportunity in mobile and mobile search. And if you want to become a gazillionaire, you might want to start hunting for the startup that will become the Google of our phones.