It would seem that all the ideas have already been thought up and the businesses the world needs have been launched, but year after year startups discover promising niches, find new pains of humanity and implement innovative projects. Not only end consumers are interested in them, but also states, corporations, gas pedals, and, of course, investors.
A hybrid model of online and offline
With the advent of COVID-19, the world entered an era of full online, but as the disease recedes and restrictions are lifted, the model shifts toward more complex interactions.
The world has yet to unite and harmonize interactions that will erase the boundaries between online and offline. The trend toward the hybrid model affects virtually all segments of the population and markets, including education, work, and training systems. Also hybrid forms of interaction are closely connected with the trend to outsourcing and outstaff, which gives new impetus to the transition of labor relations to these models.
Supply Chain Management
The world is facing a new challenge – the supply chain disruption when goods don’t reach their destination. For example, skies or straits open and close depending on the momentary geopolitical situation, and logistics workers can get sick en masse.
Supply chains were the first to collapse with the arrival of the coronavirus, experiencing a shortage of drivers, loaders and other categories of workers. Decades of cost-cutting, cost-cutting human resources and a reluctance to automate processes 100% has caused logistics to collapse around the world, especially for shipments of large and mid-sized multinational corporations.
The industry needs to develop new flexible and user-friendly solutions for every part of the supply chain that can be shared. Businesses need to get all the tools that will provide confidence in the timing of shipments.
Start Local Go Global or the New Geography of Venture Capital
Startups are considered a global story a priori, but in practice we see that 75% of all unicorns originated in the U.S., and some of them use hired staff from other jurisdictions.
Silicon Valley is a real phenomenon that no other country has yet been able to replicate. However, successful cases created in other markets are already emerging. For example, China and India are showing good dynamics, creating and scaling local startups.
Paying attention to the “new” geography, it is impossible not to note the powerful impulse from Africa, Latin America and Asia. It is worth waiting for new startups from these jurisdictions, which are ready to enter the global market and expand the investment flow in the coming years.
Agritech
Digitalization is catching up with agriculture, and it is already being actively used in food schemes, logistics and quality control.
The number of agritech projects is steadily growing, while digitalization is still low. There is a major market pain: digital illiteracy among ordinary farmers and agronomists, who need to be trained and adapted to the new realities. Even trivial access to information is also a separate challenge. Industry representatives are not aware of the measurable benefits of the proposed solutions, and most importantly, there are still few successful cases on the market.
Play-to-earn – “play to earn”
The play-to-earn trend is the latest business model in the game industry. We have been familiar with the game industry for a long time and understand how the investment market looks like in the production of computer entertainment. Now the fairly mature game industry is forming a new market within itself.
The concept is an open economy, where the player “lives” in the virtual world (metavirtual universe), contributes to its development and receives financial benefits for it. A prime example of such a game is the multiplayer RPG Albion Online, where one can both spend real money and earn it and then withdraw it from the system. At the same time in the project is built such an economic model, which does not allow for serious inflation.
Impact Investing
Impact investing is a term applied to capital allocation, financial instruments, and other things that are exclusively about business and not about people. Recently, however, startups aimed at helping society and the environment have become increasingly attractive from the point of view of investment.
In fact, impact investing attracts not only financial help from private capital. Ordinary sympathetic people are involved in the product and are willing to participate in its development without compensation. Foundations and government agencies are more than willing to provide grant support. In addition, for such startups can end up quite successfully on crowdfunding platforms.
The facilitated marketing model for impact products can be noted separately. This area allows the use of a very large number of previously untapped channels that are not covered by existing advertising tools.
The trend for personalization and personality
The personalization trend affects several segments at once, one of them being the distribution of goods and services for the b2c segment. Today, more and more companies are beginning to personalize their products to reflect the views, values and preferences of multiple target audiences.
The trend for personalization can be traced not only at the production stage, but also continues at the stage of sales through targeted advertising. The right technologies and ways in which data is collected and analyzed guarantee a relevant hit on the person who is more likely to make a purchase.