INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Rishi Garg is a partner at Mayfield who invests in driven, product-centric entrepreneurs looking to impact millions of lives
He led corporate development and strategy at Twitter, Square and MTV Networks. More posts by this contributorTen years ago the iOS App Store
Entrepreneurs everywhere rallied to take advantage, building category-defining consumer companies like Twitter, Uber, Lyft and Square, among
The rising tide in these moments becomes a tsunami: Eager customers descend on services through word of mouth and new acquisition channels;
Mobile appears mature, and the next great enabling platform is still just past the horizon
vehicles, blockchain and AI/ML.I have a different view
I think now is a great time to build consumer companies, even without a new platform
There are three reasons for this
First, the internet has created big problems for humans, organizations and society, which entrepreneurs can attack at scale
that new entrepreneurs can borrow
breakout companies created interactive platforms (Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, etc.) that have entertained many
businesses.Most of us now realize the major problems that a connected, mobile, always-on world has wrought
Entrepreneurs should be thinking of ways to help folks where they need it the most: the pocketbook
That might mean unlocking found money, ensuring that available financial resources are being used wisely or saving consumers from the
untold stories, battle scars and people available for future companies to learn from
This makes it easier for startups to assemble playbooks and experienced teams
consumer brands must define, own and curate an end-to-end experience
A great new example is GOAT, the online sneakerhead marketplace
Faced with a sneaker market full of rampant knock-offs, the founders invested in a capital- and time-intensive process to manually inspect
every shoe for authenticity
The result is an experience that every sneakerhead loves and a breakthrough consumer brand.
Building a breakout consumer platform will be
more complex, more challenging and often more capital-intensive than it was for the prior generation. There are also lots of executives
and teams that know how to lead and manage complex operations, especially on the ground
This is crucial to scale logistically complex ideas like Opendoor, Instacart and others.The other thing needed to help scale these companies
And right now, there are two particularly relevant new kinds of investors: 1) mega equity funds like SoftBank Vision Fund, and 2)
alternative lending funds that provide non-dilutive capital to companies to finance the acquisition of traditional assets
experience.Mobile today is not mobile tomorrowMobile devices have come a long way over the last decade
And there will be many more meaningful improvements in the near future, allowing for new uses and new companies.I anticipate breakthroughs
that will boost the ability of the chips and subsystems on a phone to perform optimally for far longer
Right now, these are throttled due to heating issues and other problems
like VR and AR, to take two examples, far forward into everyday use.On the network side, 5G and subsequent buildouts will meaningfully
change what kinds of bandwidth we can handle, enabling even more data and compute to be in the cloud.Mobile today is about one-to-many
broadcast platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook
Companies like Grove Collaborative (disclosure: Mayfield is an investor) are experiencing hypergrowth in part by using real people
connecting with consumers over text to bring a curated, personalized experience to shopping for household staples
I expect this to be a major trend, with the companies that earn the right to communicate more with customers the ones that win.Building a
breakout consumer platform will be more complex, more challenging and often more capital-intensive than it was for certain titans of the
But for those with the vision and substance to bring a valuable service to the world that solves real problems, the resources and emerging
technologies will be there to help create the next groundbreaking consumer brand.
