Monitoring Future Trends for Your Business Success

Global trends such as Increasing Urbanisation of our planet, Population Growth, The Life Span of Humans, and Global Warming indicate where the puck will move in the future.

For example, reducing fossil fuel and carbon emissions to slow Global warming is of the biggest challenges of our time, and Tesla is riding and capitalizing on this wave with great success.

I liked Teslas better when Elon Musk hadn't purchased Twitter; I think it's great that he's brought in a CEO; his attention-seeking antics were getting borderline desperate.

As cool and sexy as Tesla cars are, his Why is more inspiring. Setting out to create a world where fossil fuels would no longer be used to power vehicles.

You could check out Gartner’s Hype Cycle Emerging Technologies Graph to get a heads up on technologies in the Upward or downward spiral.

Drones, VR, AI, and IoT are emerging technologies occupying a larger mainstream landscape in the Future. Something to think about.

Thanks to our friendly neighborhood chatbot "ChatGPT". Everywhere you look, there's a new AI project being launched.

Over 300 new projects were launched last month alone. AI as a Startup category is already turning "Red" and is completely cornered by a few companies, namely Microsoft, via its investments in OpenAI and Google.

If your startup isn't developing base models, know you are one feature update away from MS and Google eating your lunch.

Be courteous to your little AI bot while asking questions.

Well-established industries are just waiting to be disrupted.

Legacy industries and businesses lack customer empathy and almost zero customer service, lethargy to adapt to new trends and technology, opaque bureaucracy, and outdated business practices.

Less competition stimulates less or zero innovation.

For example, Timer Warner and Comcast, cable companies in the US, used to compete for cities rather than individual customers, and that was the law of the land back then.

And when a city was awarded to a cable operator, the end users were stuck with the same operator.

The markets were closed with zero user choices and almost 100% monopoly for the businesses.

So, what happens in a monopoly? Prices go up, customer service goes down, and the business processes become more important than the users, so of course, Netflix came by and flipped the industry 360.

Cable cords were cut, and Time Warner and Comcast witnessed a massive loss of viewership.

Same for the taxi business when Uber came along. You get a taxi license, and you get it for life (Keep paying the renewal fee). It doesn’t matter the massive queues you have to wait at the airport terminals, compared with a notification that your taxi has arrived.

Or if you are wondering whether my driver is taking me for a ride (literally) vs. the ability to view the itinerary on the app.

And having to pay without knowing what the meter will charge, compared with the ability to see the price first and rate the driver.

As it turns out, detecting and resolving inefficiencies coupled with a commitment to excellent customer service is a recipe for a thriving business.

Follow the Thumb Rule: Improve and Simplify.

Another way to spot startup ideas with great potential is to look for industries with multiple middlemen & lots of bureaucracy.

And it's not about taking away the livelihoods of the middlemen; it's about transparency and helping improve the overall ecosystem within the industry.

If it's good for the customers, understand it's good for business. Everything else is just background noise.

Technology has the potential to create and nurture communities. Technology can create a go-to place or a hub for resolving a problem.

The travel industry, for example, has seen a drastic change in how it operates.

Many travel services can be easily booked online using many online portals, and customers no longer need to visit a travel agent. They can plan and execute their vacation, business trip, etc., without worrying about the lack of transparency.

There are so many players in the online travel industry that there exist portals to help compare the various portals.

Trivago, for example, helps find the best deals among all the online players in the industry.

Similar disruptions have been seen across the Food delivery and logistics industry.

The budget hotel industry has seen a similar wave of disruption, with Oyo rooms leading the charge. (I don't recommend Oyo lol) I'm using their name for lack of a better option.

These startups have one thing in common; they are all Unicorns, i.e., valued @ over $1B. Although, the Unicorn status is losing its shine. This funding dry spell has exposed how fragile these "Unicorns" are. We'll talk about this later.

Another industry getting disrupted is Banking. Although banking is a complex industry, we see it getting disrupted by many Tech Companies operating within the payments division. Such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Paytm in India, etc.

Let's take an example of Transfer wise. They are taking on banks in the domain of Internal Money transfer. Transferwise offers international money transfer @ much lower commissions with a much more streamlined and less complex system. Their campaigns are provocative, to say the least. RIP hidden fees garnered much social media attention in London and went viral worldwide.

Portraying banks as evil institutions hell-bent on stealing from us common men resonated well with the masses.

Attention, as Gary Vaynerchuk puts it, is the new currency.

Next time you see a broker trying to sell you to get his commission, realize there is potential for disruption.