The Best Way To Identify Trends Early And Profit

✨ Hi, I’m Sara! In this newsletter, I share my musings at the intersection of tech, product, and human tinkering, with the aim of navigating business and life in the Technology Era with purpose.

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I don't know about you, but the pace of technological innovation both scares and exhilarates me. It often feels like we're on the cusp of a massive technological leap, one that will bring life-altering breakthroughs across diverse sectors like healthcare, materials science, space tech, and robotics, primarily driven by AI. These advances are set to transform our daily lives, reshaping the fabric of society and government structures.

The First Mover Advantage

Capitalizing on new trends before they become mainstream is crucial as it offers the first-mover advantage.

Unlike fashion trends, which are often artificially set by brands and magazines to stimulate continuous purchasing, trends in business and entrepreneurship usually emerge with the advent of new technology.

This leads to fresh ideas and opportunities.

By "new technologies," I refer to situations where either a new technology becomes mainstream (e.g., NFTs in 2021 or AI in 2022) or an existing technology reaches a pivotal point. Often, this is driven by a major player, creating opportunities for smaller entities (e.g., Amazon FBA and dropshipping, print-on-demand, or AWS for cloud computing).

Because once a trend "crosses the chasm" and reaches the early majority, competition intensifies. It then becomes challenging to differentiate oneself in a crowded market, especially with low entry barriers, as observed in print-on-demand on platforms like Etsy or in the AI sector (eg. the newly released GPT store). Consequently, profit margins tend to decrease.

A Systematic Approach To Innovation

Here is a step-by-step blueprint on how I evaluate trends and some tips on the tools I use to spot trends early on.

Step 1: Know when the current trend is about to end

Market Saturation Analysis: Keep a close eye on market data to spot signs of saturation. These can include slowing sales growth, a rise in competition, or a dip in consumer interest.

Technology Adoption Lifecycle: Evaluate the current trend's position within the technology adoption lifecycle stages — Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, Laggards. Bear in mind that the lifecycle is becoming shorter and shorter as illustrated in the example below.

Expert Insights: Seek insights from industry and thought leaders on the lifecycle stage of the current trend on social platforms (eg. X, Reddit), while also monitoring shifts in consumer behaviors.

Pro Tip: Google Trends can be a handy tool to gauge the current trend’s popularity. Below, I've compared two trending technologies. In 2022, blockchain, with its crypto, Web3, and NFT buzz, represented a major profit-making opportunity. We observed a surge in startups like crypto exchanges, DeFi platforms, and PFP NFT projects. This trend peaked for just over a year, eventually declining due to negative press in the crypto space and the rising prominence of AI. The graph below clearly shows a spike in 'AI' searches on Google in December 2022, coinciding with the release of ChatGPT 3.

To take advantage of a trend you ideally want to be positioned right before the spike happens. Interestingly, also the term AI seems now declining compared to all-time heights.

Step 2: Monitoring for New Trends

Identify Key Sources:

• Industry Publications: Regularly read leading technology journals and online publications. My go-to sources are TechCrunch, The Verge, and Wired.

• Social Media and Online Forums: Set alerts for tech discussions on platforms like Twitter, Reddit (/r/tech and artificial intelligence), and niche forums like Hacker News.

• Patent Databases and Academic Journals: Stay updated with the latest patents and research papers from academic journals. You can search arxiv for research paper publication and Google patents for patent publication worldwide.

• Technology Conferences and Webinars: Keep an eye on major tech events and webinars for the latest insights.

For a more advanced approach, consider using web scraping tools and APIs to automate data collection from these sources. You can then apply NLP (Natural Language Processing) to analyze textual data, identifying emerging keywords, topics, and trends. Sentiment analysis can also help gauge public interest and perceptions of various technologies.

Step 3: Validating Emerging Trends

• Understand the Trend: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the trend’s nature, potential impact, and applications.

• Research Applications: Explore how these trends are being applied or could be applied across different sectors.

• Market Gap Analysis: Evaluate the market to identify gaps or unmet needs relating to the trends.

• Market Research: Use surveys, focus groups, or market experiments to gauge interest in and acceptance of the trends.

• Brainstorming Sessions: Hold sessions to generate business ideas based on these validated trends. Stay tuned for more on this in the next issue of our newsletter – check your inbox!

7 Emerging Trends and Predictions For 2024

Let's face it, none of us owns a crystal ball. However, drawing from my research following the above approach and insights from industry leaders and experts on the Polyweb podcast, here are my predictions for tech and AI trends in 2024:  

1. Highly Specialized AI: If 2023 was the year of Large Language Models (LLMs), 2024 will likely focus on highly specialized AI designed for specific tasks or industry verticals. These will be like application layers built on foundational LLMs such as OpenAI, similar to how DApps and Web3 evolved from Ethereum. For instance, the legal tech startup Harvey.ai, just a year old, has already secured an $80 million investment from entities including OpenAI and Sequoia.

2. Generative AI Beyond Content: Moving beyond content and text creation, Generative AI will tackle challenging problems across various sectors. Potential applications include drug discovery and material science, where AI can accelerate the creation of new drugs and materials. This could significantly advance fields like quantum computing that largely face material science challenges.
   Google's GNoME project, for example, recently identified over 2 million new crystals, paving the way for future technologies. Other areas like education, personalized medicine, and longevity research will also see growth, leveraging AI to analyze large datasets for insights into aging and health.

3. Generative AI in Content Creation: The content side of Generative AI will continue to evolve rapidly. I predict the emergence of hyper-realistic, Hollywood-quality short films and the rise of advanced deepfake technology, particularly relevant in the context of the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

4. AI Autonomous Agents: 2024 is poised to be a landmark year for AI autonomous agents – virtual assistants programmed to perform repetitive complex tasks. While some experiments exist today, I expect massive adoption and significant enhancements in the coming year.

5. Multimodal AI: This refers to AI systems capable of understanding and responding to various data types like text, images, audio, and video. Contrasting with unimodal AI, which processes only one data type, Multimodal AI is set to become the dominant model in 2024.

6. Advancements in Robotics and Automation: Significant progress in AI-integrated robotics is likely, though we won’t see mainstream adoption in 2024 due to complexity and costs.

7. The Rise of VR and Spatial Computing and The Decline of Smartphones and Apps: 2024 could mark the beginning of a shift away from smartphones towards devices that enable more seamless interaction with our surroundings. The launch of products like Humane's AI Pin, the Rabbit LAM model, and the upcoming release of Apple's VR headset in the U.S. are likely to drive this technology toward mass adoption.
   We might be witnessing the beginning of the end for smartphones and traditional apps, as these new technologies emerge to replace them.

The “Now” section

🎧 What I am listening to: I'm currently listening to a conversation between Lex Friedman and Guillaume Verdon, also known as Beff Jezos on Twitter. His perspectives are a key part of my research on trends.

📚 What I am reading: I recently stopped reading “The Courage to Be Disliked” as it didn't quite keep my interest, despite its interesting premise. I've now started “The School of Life” by Alain de Botton

🥁 What I am doing: Big news on the personal front – I'm joining Antler at the end of this month to build a startup from the ground up in the next 10 weeks! The idea is still forming, and I'm on the lookout for a co-founder. I’m a mix of nerves and excitement about this venture.
I plan to document every step of this journey, from concept to creation, through my newsletter, YouTube channel, and an upcoming TikTok account. Stay tuned for updates on this adventure from zero to startup!

🧐 Question I am asking myself:

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