Innovation’s Next Wave: Software Inventing Software

“Software is eating the world.” Marc Andreessen, founder of Internet pioneer Netscape, made that prophetic statement in 2011, and it’s even truer today. Seven of the world’s biggest companies today are technology firms, up from three just eight years ago.

But sustaining that rapid growth is becoming more difficult as the labor pool shrinks for computer scientists, and software engineers and developers. The unemployment rate for technology workers hit just 1.3% in May. Hiring development talent has become one of the greatest challenges for growing technology companies.

Eric Norlin of SK Ventures, a venture capital manager with whom AMG works, recently speculated that software itself might offer the solution to the software-developer shortage. He noted that software already is helping invent new software and the trend is bound to accelerate as companies look to alleviate bottlenecks in development. AMG works with venture capital funds owning interests in several companies innovating in this field, including the following:

InVision — A prototyping and collaboration tool that helps web engineers and designers more efficiently develop interactive mobile and desktop landing pages.

LaunchDarkly — A computer-coding tool that any business can use to test, manage and improve software features. The platform allows companies to make different features available to select groups without shipping everything to everyone at the same time.

Torii — A cloud-based management platform that helps IT managers discover, audit and control software-as-a-service apps used by employees.

Coder — A cloud-based development platform that allows programmers to collaborate on the same code in real-time.