I don’t invest any more, but here are some areas I’d be interested to see startups explore:
The hallway track for remote and hybrid teams. One reason many companies are enacting return to office policies is to re-establish cross-pollination across teams. Yes, a strong, intentional remote culture would render that moot, but not every company has that. So what does it look like to build scaffolding that goes beyond the water cooler and intentionally surfaces ideas and reactions across teams, including across timezones? Slack is a set of chatrooms at heart — what if you optimize for asynchronous reflection and building on ideas, not just real-time discussion?
Composable, local AI made easy. There are lots of use cases for AI in the enterprise, but for many high-value use cases sharing data with centralized services owned by OpenAI, Microsoft, or Google isn’t tenable. Sensitive data needs to be treated carefully, and protective contract terms often aren’t enough (consider what happens when a provider is subpoenaed, for example). Let’s make building AI tools that don’t share data beyond your local computer incredibly easy, even for people who can’t code.
Pro tools for the fediverse. The fediverse is going to continue to grow, in part because of the maturity of its underlying technology, and in part because countries across the world are tightening anti-monopoly rules, creating strong business reasons to adopt open standards and interoperability. Many fediverse platforms and services don’t meet the needs of larger organizations or professional use cases, due to the wrong mix or features or a more technical user experience. How can startups remove friction from taking advantage of the fediverse, and add ecosystem tools that grow in value as more users onboard? (By the way, I still think an API service that helps people build tools on the fediverse has legs.)
Substack (or Ghost) for indie and open source developers. Substack and Ghost have paved the way for a kind of journalist entrepreneur who can launch a subscription and make a living by themselves. What if we could do the same thing for indie developers who wanted to support their work? Imagine built-in subscriptions connected to a social discovery mechanism where developers recommend other developers’ work: a network that makes it far easier for developers to make a living from doing what they love independently. This is particularly important in a world where many developers have left big cities and are resisting return to office mandates: going it alone could be a viable alternative. Kickstarter et al let people support a project; this would allow you to support the creator, with more network effects and built-in software integrations than something like a Patreon.
Metrics in a box. A tool that connects to your analytics, payment processor, newsletter tool, etc, and automatically gives you insights, generates actionable reports on your preferred cadence, and answers questions without you needing to deal with schemas, configure specific views, or make queries yourself. You could refine its outputs by giving it feedback in natural language, and ask questions using the same. Another way of putting this: what if your in-house data analyst was software that you didn’t need to configure?
Redefine the US rail experience. Private rail cars (or — more ambitiously — whole trains?) that operate a bit like a WeWork: luxury accommodations, high-bandwidth satellite wifi, phone call booths, desks, private rooms with comfortable beds. Make it easy to choose to take a long-distance train instead of a flight without sacrificing comfort or connectivity. High-speed rail is great and important, and such a business would expand to get there, but in the meantime this experience would make the longer travel time matter a great deal less, while helping business travelers to lower their carbon footprint. One can imagine this initially working best between destinations like Miami and New York, or San Francisco and LA, but the real goal would be nationwide. (Hey, dream big.)
Magic for the elderly. A lot of people swear by services like Magic’s executive assistant offering: a way for executives and entrepreneurs to get remote help with doing important work. But we all need help as we get older. What does it look like for older people to get their own executive assistants to help them with administration and life’s daily chores?
Open bookkeeping and administration for distributed groups. There’s plenty of bookkeeping and administration software out there. Most of it is understandably privacy-focused, allowing very few people to access your sensitive information. But what happens if you’re part of a group — an extended family managing a house, say, or a loose co-operative — that needs to have a shared view of their finances and administration? There’s very little for them beyond, say, Open Collective, which is for a very specific kind of organizational unit. What does it look like for a group to share and stream their finances and decisions?
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It’s been six years (gulp) since I last invested in a startup as part of any kind of fund, but I’m still excited by the idea and the ethos of startups. While there are plenty of bad businesses out there (for any definition of “bad”), the idea of a group of people getting together and trying to build a new, useful product as part of a sustainable business engine really appeals to me. There’s definitely a part of me that wishes I still could make financial bets into ventures. (Let’s be clear: I could never have invested in an idea like reinventing rail travel. That wasn’t my area. But wouldn’t it be cool?)
I really like Homebrew’s investment process statement, which is very close to how I’d want to do it too (commit the time and energy to help build an ethical, enduring, high-quality business). And this piece in particular stands out to me:
We invest in mission-driven founders who embrace big – big ideas, big impact, big risk.
The combination of real mission, impact, and risk is important. That’s where the exciting stuff is.
Greylock, the veteran Silicon Valley venture capital firm, recently put out a call for startups that was all AI, all the time. Long-time readers will know that I have a contrarian take on that — and that I worry AI is sucking oxygen away from other, genuinely useful products that could form the basis of great businesses. I also don’t shy away from AI completely: there are real applications for the technology that will linger long after the hype cycle has died down. Still, their post was the inspiration for this one: I think there are more interesting, broader, longer-term trends that are worth paying attention to.
What are you excited by? If you were an investor — or if you are — what would you be keeping your eye out for?
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