Ben Parr

Three trends to watch:

1. Local social net­work­ing. This is about groups and about com­mu­ni­ties. It’s the local meetup club. It’s the local library users. The social enter­prise is also about local networking.
2. Con­ver­gence of enter­tain­ment and dig­i­tal. The con­ver­gence of Sil­i­con Val­ley and Hol­ly­wood. Things like TV inte­grat­ing the web more into their shows.
3. The end of the real-time web. We’re going to find bet­ter ways to con­trol and parse through the infor­ma­tion that’s com­ing at us.

Three prob­lems star­tups will face:

1. The finan­cial cri­sis has cre­ated an uncer­tainty cloud that hangs over all star­tups now. Entre­pre­neurs don’t know whether there will be money or not. Cus­tomers don’t know whether they should buy things or not.
2. The tal­ent wars. Com­pa­nies like Google are offer­ing every greater sums and perks to keep employ­ees. Star­tups are also giv­ing out perks and gim­micks to keep engi­neer­ing talent.
3. There are lots of ideas out there. Peo­ple think that “if you build it, they will come.” This is a fal­lacy. Most ideas suck. Less than 15% of the ideas Ben hears on a daily basis have any chance of becom­ing a startup. Most of the ideas are just incre­men­tal improve­ments, rather than fun­da­men­tal changes to tech­nol­ogy and soci­ety. Incre­men­tal ideas are eas­ier to pur­sue because they require less ideas. The prob­lem is that peo­ple will spend three or four years build­ing incre­men­tal ideas, which will leave them with no real busi­ness and they will not have built up good skills. Also, this leads to a crowded mar­ket. (Please don’t build a photo-sharing app or a dail deals site). Chang­ing the world is really, really, really hard.

Some friendly advice:

1. Don’t plant a flower, plant a sequoia. The tree will sur­vive harsh win­ters, not the flower. Build some­thing that will last.
2. Be adapt­able. Great ideas always evolve, and so do great entrepreneurs.
3. Don’t build a com­pany. Build a cause. Don’t just build a busi­ness because you think it’s going to make money. Build some­thing that you will spend hours and hours behind because you know it’s going to change the world. Money is the side effect.