Investor survey results: Upcoming trends in social startups

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.

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

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.

We’re already seeing this unbundling of consumer platforms starting within communities that have a deep affinity and sense of identity, and are not well served by general purpose social networks – for example, gaming communities assembling in virtual worlds such as Minecraft and Roblox and using Discord to communicate, communities that coalesce aro... 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).

VR is an interesting category but there are real hardware barriers to overcome. For the time being we still consider VR niche: let’s see when headset usage becomes more commonplace, and how that impacts the landscape upon which such companies are built.

We’ve been exploring tech-enabled IRL, both on the “online to offline” origination side and using tech to make IRL experiences more impactful. Pre-COVID, IRL was definitely experiencing a comeback, and we expect this to resume in the future. Localization is a big theme for us, as we believe that local relationships have far greater potential to dri... See more

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.

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

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