The official trend whispering season is open as everyone shares their mild, predictable views on 2012. The problem is that when people talk about trends, they’re not trends anymore! They are already happening.
It’s time to challenge these “everybody knows that” kind of predictions.
These are MY OUTRAGEOUS predictions for the Web in 2012.
Ebay crashes after Paypal’s suffers eroding margins due to disruptive (and massive) competition
Payment systems are a broke. But this is a segment driven by a lot of inertia and slow adoption.
Startups are tired of obnoxious behavior by the big guys like Paypal and the slow innovation cycle of the industry will be shaken by new entrants, fragmenting the market heavily by removing complexity and reducing payment fees, effectively growing by cannibalizing the big player’s margins. Dwolla is the emerging name of what’s only the first wave..
Ebay’s dependency on the Paypal’s cash cow will go down, hitting $11 on the stock markets, around the minimums of the 2001 and early 2009.
RIP “Series A crunch”. Long live the Mega A-rounds. Top startups now raising $30M+ at $200M+ valuations
While investors try to put bigger bets on the global winners and mega funds like DST start investing in earlier stages, $200M+ valuations for A-rounds are more of a norm. Who’s to blame? The predictability of the industry leaders…
and the Samwer brothers!
The Samwer’s want to expand their copycatting model to a worldwide reach. This will force successful startups to take internationalization efforts earlier since it starts to make more economic sense to internationalize earlier than to compete or pay $400M in acquisition costs to the Samwer’s down the road. The Mega rounds will become more frequent to support this effort.
Big thinking will prevail and small thinkers squashed along the way.
Being Entrepreneur isn’t plain cool anymore
It was always hard but Hollywood made it look fashionable for a while. Incubators and accelarators everywhere positively removed barriers to start but many would-be entrepreneurs didn’t took the time to digest what being an entrepreneur really means. It’s an darn hard, lonely, life-long journey dudes!
The first generation of entrepreneurs driven by the hype will start tumbling as they hit the 18-32 month barrier, the most challenging time for any startup where lack of profitability and traction drive many to feel the real pain 0f being entrepreneur, after the early days of joy are over. Only the tougher ones will survive (whatever that means). Raising money isn’t the driver to surpass that barrier, I’m sorry.. It’s tough… Loads will realize that, the hard way.
More startups are acquired earlier as a side effect as major players try to snatch talent that is not widely available. This becomes a de facto hiring bonus for the entrepreneurs turned corporate employees in the process.
Social implodes. With a bang!
Social, local and mobile are features. People must realize that sooner or later and 2012 will enforce that. The hard way..
Many people see innovation macro-cycles on the web as 10-12 year cycles: these are substantially reduced due to the recent money poured into concept-stage startups. Social is dead and Mobile is not Web 3.0: it is just a shift where people consume the web dynamically across multiple devices. The real shift will be huge. It will force social, local and mobile to take their place as a feature.
2011 was the “groupon for everything” year and that’s gone. Social apps are following the same path. There’s “500″ apps for everything. No critical scale and/or sustainable revenue equals failing. Big time.
Winners will be more winners. Being the second best doesn’t pay off anymore. Remember Gowalla?
The main problem? People only have 24 hours a day and they can’t overload their life using too many social tools. People only use 1, maybe 2 apps to consume social information. Can the masses use Twitter, G+ and Facebook intensively? No way!!! Most only use one app for photos, not “500″.
Le’ts make an exercise: ask every social app out there how much they need from their users in one given day. Summing them all will turn thousands of hours per day, which doesn’t make any kind of sense.
AirBnB of everything: Dead industries are really dead and they didn’t saw it coming
2012 will be the year of AirBnb (Uber and RedBeacon) for everything.
Big, fat industries sitting on old school monopolies face a huge amount of competition since new startups start allowing consumers to offer services to other consumers at fair value, through a simple and efficient experience.
AirBnb disrupted the hotel industry. Uber and GetAround disrupted the transport and taxi industry. RedBeacon and others are moving further. This will be replicated as copy cats expand on the vision.
Many industries that hold local monopolies will be hit hard as web tools drive sale and local competition.
So, what’s your outrageous prediction for 2012?
PS: What about advertising, you may ask? 2012 will be huge but I won’t share my views on it since I have my own hands dirty 
keep watching..
DISCLAIMER: This outrageous predictions thing isn’t really original. I was inspired by Saxo Bank’s outrageous predictions, which I’ve been following every year since 2006 or 2007.
The South Pole was reached 100 years ago.
I sometimes wonder if I’d be an historian since I geek a lot with this kind of events. Antartica is a special place on that level for me since I’d love to sail there on my own one day (geeking out while watching some swedes doing it meanwhile ).
Anyway, everyone in love with history and exploration is celebrating today. The Portuguese started a great era of discoveries where European boundaries weren’t enough anymore: this was one of the last greatest discoveries of those times, IMHO.
Human dreams + Resilience + limits waiting to be overcome = awesome achievements
via Mr @sacca on twitter.
Fired up thoughts about yet another one. Little things deserve a book: Persistence and stubbornness proving naysayers wrong is probably worth a few pages on many books.
Excited & scared: off we go…
By Jason Calacanis. Liked it, sharing it;)
1. Unrelenting attention to detail.
2. Impeccable taste.
3. Indefatigable passion.
4. Absolute conviction.
5. Unwavering vision.
6. Boundless curiosity.
7. Mercurial motivator.
One or two of these will help you make a living.
Three or four of these will make you successful.
Four of five of these will make you a legend.
Five or six of these will make you iconic for all time.
All seven will make you Steve Jobs.
And Steve Jobs’ take about the suject: http://youtu.be/VCz_SiPD_X0
If you are seing this…you just won one extra point since you probably googled my name while applying for a job posted by me. Resourceful, smart, I like that.
80% of all the points required to get a job at Influads are somewhat granted because you’ll find everything that you need to know about what I am looking for when meet you. This also means that we’ll need to play at a different level when meeting for the first time, since I assume you’ll memorize this blog post There’s still 20% remaining.
DISCLAIMER: This post was made while meeting some people but it was not inspired by any particular meeting. Ie, don’t take it as personal if we met before. Actually do take it personal and see if some of these apply to you. Feel free to take them in consideration… and by the way, if you want concrete feedback ask for it.
What do we do?
Don’t say “ads”. That’s a too short of one answer.
I wouldn’t want to talk to you in the first place if i knew that you took some of my time to make a job interview when you didn’t even knew the basics of what we do at InfluAds. You’ll be hired by the value that you add: If you don’t know our business what are you adding up to, anyway??
Ignorance is ok, and we don’t expect people to know everything. Being wrong about some things is often OK. Don’t be afraid, just research a bit before applying for a job (pleeeeease).
We are a startup, ya’ know?
If you want to work with us, you are willing to work at a startup and you know what it takes. You are likely to be as committed as it takes.
Put your money where your mouth his: don’t say that you like to work in startups if you are not willing to work under it requisites.
Do you live by your 9 to 5 work-life balance? Startups do not tend to separate work and life very well, you know? We all like balance but we all work under pressure and uncertainty.. That’s the definition startup, unless a startup is funded by a rich uncle.
You have kids, you have your life: no worries, we may have as well actually. Prove us that you’re better than the next guy that I’m meeting with though. Working more hours is very different from achieving more: we know that.
I have ADHD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
Well, not the medical condition but something close to it.
I’m handling 50 things at the same time and looking at many other profiles that are competing against you. Assume that I know nothing about you and talk to me as concisely as possible. If you have a point and are trying to saying it in a big sentence, state that point first and then develop the argumentation quickly and efficiently.
You are an honest bitch** and I like it
** Ok, that sounds veeery weird…
I actually ment: Be bitchy while being positive and honest…
Don’t ask permission to be honest. I expect that and only that. I’ll be almost offended if you are not
”Don’t ask for permission, ask forgiveness” (if you really need to).
I’m often wrong and I do wrong or half-baked things all the time. I even know it many times since my job is based on doing many different things with little resources and managing it risk. I need you to pinpoint examples of things that I/we did wrong. I don’t take it personal and smart comments are valued since they give me direct feedback that I related to while making you look smart.
I want to know that you noticed what’s wrong since you’ll be more likely to help me solving them if you are hired.
You are resourceful
If you are here since you googled my name, you’re in the right path already. Showcase some resourcefulness when we meet. Talk about previous jobs where that was made and show me why you’ll be doing that in my company.
You’ll need to be scrappy. How will you help me achieving a lot with little resources? Do you need a huge marketing budget to make things wrong? We are not the right company, I am afraid… A governmental job may be…
Think ROI. Always!
Be driven by results. Always know what you are trying to do and which results you are likely to get from it. Always prioritize: Contact the most likely prospects first, look for quick wins. Thing pro-actively. Don’t do things with low return. Value your time and everybody else’s time!
Are you salesy?
Well, may you don’t like sales. Maybe you are not applying to a sales job…
I don’t expect you to be the salesman stereotype but I expect you to believe in a vision and be good at selling. Always… You’ll be talking to a lot of different stakeholders regardless of your role and selling our vision and passion is everybody’s job around here.
If you are not, what can you do to improve that.
You like communication
..because you’ll talk to people. You are likely to have a better job interview with me if you understand what’s involved in communication.
Free tip. Communication is all about:
- The message: what is in it, and how effective is it
- The sender of the message: a corrupt polititian telling you to pay more taxes doesn’t seem right, does it?
- The receiver of the message: in this case, me. What’s the difference when talking about racism to an african guy vs to the KKK?
- The context/enviroment: your message must be louder in noisy environments (literal noise or not). Your message has a different meaning depending on it timing
How would you communicate under different scenarios? How efficient would you be able to be because you understand these elements? That’s what I’m looking for. Show it.
You are self-aware
The first step for recovery is realizing that you have a problem.
If you are not aware of your strong points and weaknesses, you are less likely to leverage or improve them. I wan’t to know what your strong points are since I’ll hire you because of them. I will need to know where you have room for improvement since I’ll help you doing that.
You are likely to be awesome to work with
And we wanna work with that kind of people. Our team is part of the selection process and they’ll want to work with you if you are going to work with us.
Be ready for Questions, loads of them
I ask why often. Heck, I’m asking all the other W’s often..
Sometimes you don’t know the answer (and you are not expected to know it always) but I’m mostly trying to understand how you rationalize/answer under that context. Again be honest. I don’t know if better than fluffy answers that try to reply vaguely… If you answer vagely I’ll probably ask you to do it concretely so you better do it at first
Do you speak Danish/can I apply in Danish (/Portuguese)?
No. Our official language is English. We are an international-minded company. Our office is in Denmark but we have an international team (working here and elsewhere). While I’m good with trying my danish skills, I am likely to be too busy to do it. I may even want to share your profile with other team members if you are the right candidate and may or may not know danish.
I also want to read some English from you to understand how proficient you are, so that’s a good excuse. We like multi-cultural environments so you wouldn’t be working in a Danish environment anyway.
Be social
Friday beers and barbecues apart, we are a web-based company and we are not stuck in the version 1.0 of the Web. Companies are social nowadays so why aren’t you? Do you use Twitter? Facebook? Google+? What was the latest online tool that you subscribed to?Why? Or why not?
THAT’S A LOT OF STUFF! Anything else?
Yes. I’ll probably wonder about:
- Your personal interests
- What do you have on your browser’s bookmark
- Your favorites sites
- Books that you are reading or read recently
- Your thoughts about building awesome startups
- Your Myers-Briggs (out of silly curiosity)
After reading dozens of CVs, your CV is just a bunch of rumbling. Assume that, trying to be effective by sharing early how you are different. Heck, we don’t need your CV. A few links may as well be more relevant.
So, Are you the right one? Apply!!! We are looking for Account Managers, Community Management Interns and (perhaps) another perfect Marketing Manager.
..You can’t sit straight…
That’s when you know that the guy sitting in front of you may may not be a candidate for that job, but a true partner instead… #InterestingPeopleMakeMyDay
