Investor survey results: Upcoming trends in social startups

With more than 30% of the world’s population playing games today, gaming and social behaviors are beginning to blur.

We’re excited about social networks that give creators the necessary infrastructure to make money in a seamless way. Because many of us are staying or working at home now, the audiences for consuming online content have never been bigger.

The idea of anonymity is intriguing, and these apps get a lot of downloads by appealing to our natural curiosity — we want to know what other people are really thinking! However, they can quickly turn negative with bullying and trolls taking advantage of the fact that their identities aren’t tied to their posts. It’s also tough to monetize this typ... See more

Death of the attention economy and a focus on the betterment of users. Platforms that focus on fostering meaningful connections and are founded on principles that champion our mental health, personal growth, and happiness.

Voice as a social medium. Voice continues to pick up steam as a broadcast medium via podcasting, but we haven’t seen a lot in social or P2P voice yet. We think a successful platform will leverage the fact that voice content can be created and consumed while doing other things. We’re big fans of companies like TTYL and Drivetime that are making stri... See more

I’ve seen many businesses trying to solve the problem of individuals getting together offline for activities. Existing solutions to this problem seem to be good enough; we can text easily to set up these plans.

Flexible digital identities. Gen Zers are online constantly but have different preferences across platforms/friend groups about how they want to “show up” digitally. The rise of “Finsta” accounts is one good example of this. Companies like Facemoji already help users create social content using a curated digital avatar — we’re excited to see what e... See more

“Unbundling of YouTube.” You can build a big company by targeting a vertical within YouTube with a product that has better features and more opportunities for creator monetization. Twitch is a great example of this! We’re also watching early stage companies like Supergreat (in beauty) and Tingles (ASMR).

There are lots of social models that I’m excited about — in particular companies that help strangers meet strangers, products that leverage audio or video in new ways, vertical communities, location-based social groups, and products that address emotions of loneliness, fear and confidence in new ways.

We love AR, but new entrants need to be able to differentiate meaningfully from existing platforms who are able to simply add more AR features to an already captive audience. While the widening of access to AR technology via existing channels (e.g. extensive filters) has been helpful in driving mass market adoption and familiarization, it’s also be... See more