1. Our phones are becoming our remote controls
for life. If we have a need
for it in our daily lives, there should and will be an icon and app for it on
our phone. It’s as simple as that. Our phones are our emergency kit for
first-world problems.
Whether it’s a taxi or a ride in the rain (Uber, Lyft), a mechanic (YourMechanic),
a doctor’s appointment (ZocDoc), the literal remote control (AppleTV), a
personal assistant (Exec), a cake-baker (Zaarly), groceries
(Instacart), or you’re getting a little chilly and want the
temperature in the house turned up (Nest), our phones are the concierge. I expect this phenomenon
to continue in 2013 and as we run into times in our daily lives when we don’t
have an icon for it just yet. Someone will be working hard to create it.
I
understand that many of these services are not rolled out across the entire
country (much less the world), but trust me when I say that the convenience
these services offer blows my mind every time I use them.
2. Crowdfunding behavior will spill beyond
their silos. We as Internet consumers are
becoming increasingly comfortable with a new, or some would say, a very old,
style of commerce. It’s one where a patron, client or customer purchases
something that doesn’t exist yet — a la Groupon (via bulk-buying and daily deals),
Kickstarter (via crowdfunding a documentary or a hardware product into
existence), or our own site, Crowdtilt, making ambitious group
experiences possible. These new types of
consumer models require money, a group of people, and a threshold of demand
that must be met before the exchange is made. This communication through
commerce makes a lot of sense for all parties: A seller is guaranteed demand
before production and a buyer gets to take advantage of the de-risked
production, getting a higher ticket item for a lower price than she or he would
receive otherwise.
In 2012 we also saw massively successful crowdfunded
projects like App.net andLockitron.com raise millions on their own, with commerce models
borrowed from crowdfunding sites. In 2013, I think this commerce model will
continue to spill beyond the silos that pioneered the models in the first
place.
(Crowdtilt just launched the world’s first
international crowdfunding API this month,
so you can say this prediction is either completely self-promotional or that we
believe in this trend so strongly we put our money where our mouth is by
fostering it.)
Furthermore, we have hardware tinkerers coming out of the
woodwork to blow us away with their inventions and innovative uses for
inexpensive, readily available sensors. From things like Xbox Kinnect and
Belkin’s Wemo Motion, to Fitbit and Jawbone’s Up, to replacements for standard
cardboard board games (Sifteo), or startups like Wattvision (wattvision.com),
sensors are being used in incredibly inexpensive and impressive ways.
3. Sensors, your time is now. In our
pockets, we’ve got a device that can control, read and display information from
the world around us — and it can do it all continuously and wirelessly.
And this doesn’t even include the contactless payment
systems using NFC/RFID (“near field communication” and “radio-frequency
identification”) readers and devices that we’ve been hearing about for a few
years now. (RFID readers and devices are projected to triple
in sales by 2014 and reach a world-wide
market size of $20bn USD.
If smart
devices like our phones, our tablets and the sophisticated console navigation
systems in our vehicles are the brains, it’s time to give them limbs.
4. ‘Hollow Giants’ looking for business models (or
suitors). Tumblr, Foursquare, Quora and Twitter are perceived as
massive companies within the startup ecosystem. But in terms of
revenue-generating businesses, they barely register on the radar. And since the
Facebook IPO, social hasn’t really had the shine it once did within the
public or private markets.
Do I think
social is dead? No. On the contrary, I think the Web is still ripe for a more
social experience, but I think that while these companies have proven they can
get an audience, the time has come to see whether they can build a business off
that audience or whether that audience is worth an acquisition by the likes of
Google or Yahoo.
Whatever
these massively funded and massively valued startups do in 2013, their behavior
will likely be dictated by the need to prop up their massive valuations. This
kind of pressure or challenge is nothing new for the founders and executives
that got their companies to this point, but it will be interesting to see which
direction each startup takes in the next 12 months.
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