anti-hype and anti-trends

There’s a strong argument to be made that the most compelling solutions in the short history of the New Internet have been those that are the most commonplace, slow, ambient, and avoidant of hype. Products that actually work and will continue to.

Once you have many people doing something, you have lots of competition and little differentiation. You, generally, never want to be part of a popular trend… So I think trends are often things to avoid. What I prefer over trends is a sense of mission. That you are working on a unique problem that people are not solving elsewhere.

All those tech-driven foods are still around, but they don’t tempt consumers the way they once did. Instead, the fastest growing categories in the food business are built on an entirely different vocabulary: gourmet, artisan, healthy, organic, nutritious, sustainable, local, homemade.

In fact, one of the things that will not survive is novelty itself: trends, fads, fashions, scenes, vibes. We are thrown back into cyclical time; what’s growing old is the cruel demand to make things new.