Nintendo Switch, the Nokia 7110… what are the tech devices and gadgets that changed your life? How about you biggest disappointments?
In this episode of Tech Deciphered, we will share ours. We look forward to hearing yours. Share on LinkedIn or via email or X

Navigation:

1. Intro (01:34 )


2. Tech That Changed Our Lives


3. Our Worst Tech Purchases


4. Reflection & Takeaways


5. Conclusion

Our co-hosts:

• Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt


• Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro

Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news

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Bertrand Schmitt
Welcome to Tech Deciphered, episode 67. This will be a lighter episode as summer is upon us. We will discuss and talk about tech that changed our lives, as well as tech that disappointed.

Some of you might know, some of you might not know, but both me and Nuno are tech nerds. We have played with tech most of our lives, always looking for the next available new piece of technology to use or collect. We are going to talk about that and maybe start on the positive side. The tech that changed our lives.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
I’m sure everyone has their stories. Even if you’re not a nerd, there’s going to be that piece of equipment, that mobile phone, that gaming console, that whatever, that dramatically changed you, made you more productive, or allowed you to do something that you’d never done before, et cetera.

It’s always an interesting conversation to have, and it creates a lot of wonderful memories. It brings you back to places, it brings you back to that moment where you bought the device, that first time that you used it, the experiences you had, some of them maybe actually, not necessarily positive. We’ll come back to the worst tech purchases of all time. Shall I launch Austilities, Bertrand? Shall I tell my first one?

Bertrand Schmitt
Sure, Nuno, feel free.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
Good stuff. I’ll start with maybe the one that I’ve had the longest memory on, which is the Philips Videopac. Now, many of you will have no clue what I’m talking about.

Bertrand Schmitt
No idea.

Nuno Goncalves Pedro
The Videopac. Even Bertrand, which is impressive. The Videopac was a video game console that worked with cartridges, launched obviously via Philips. I’m not sure if the one I had was actually from Philips, question mark. It was the same format and I remember it very fondly.

It was really a gaming console with a little joystick. Very basic thing. The Videopac was actually launched first thing in ’83. I’m not sure when I first started using it, but I suspect I was 7 or 8 years old, so that would have been a couple of years thereafter.

I remember it fondly. We got it from Andorra. If you guys know, I was born in Portugal. Andorra is this small-owned country between Spain and France, and they had no sales taxes