Aim for tomorrow, because tomorrow will become today: Nick Yang

Nick Yang, Founding Partner of angel investor Lebox Capital, was a surprise speaker at this year's first Mobile Game Asia, held in Singapore this July. Yang has the honour of being the youngest president of a listed company on a US stock exchange when his KongZhong, a company focusing on wireless value-added services listed on NASDAQ - that is, until Facebook came along, he says with a grin. 

Yang observes that things change very fast in the gaming industry. "Aim for tomorrow, don't plan for today," he said. "Whatever you see today is going to change tomorrow."

Instead of investing in mobile games, Yang is already looking at TV games which can be played on Android TV boxes, he disclosed. "The harmless platforms are the ones that are going to kill the giants," he said, alluding to the potential mass market value of the hardware compared to premium devices like Xbox or Playstation. 

"Individual grasshoppers are harmless but hundreds of millions of grasshoppers eat everything. That's what's happening today," he said. 

Another trend to watch is e-sports. "This will be the future of sports. In the future, people won't watch human players, they will just watch e-players. The Olympics will become the E-sport Olympics," he said. 

Yang has a good track record for predictions, he said. "In 1999 I was telling (people) that in about five, six years things will be totally transformed by the Internet," he said. "What I'm investing in today is the age of robotics, in five years, robots will be everywhere."