The 4 Hot Categories

As a Marketing and Product Management Consultant in Silicon Valley I'm constantly being asked about what I think the next hot categories and areas of focus are going to be.

Here's my list of what I believe are the four categories that are getting funded and have tremendous upside:

1.) Social Computing. If you haven't checked out Friendster, Linkedin, Public Mind, Plaxo or any of the other companies in this space you are missing out on what I believe will become the next category to experience viral growth that rivals the early days of HotMail. These companies all have very interesting solutions, solve real customer problems and have the infrastructure and customer familiarity level with the Internet to allow them to rapidly grow.

2.) Security. This has been hot for a while, and will only continue. As the M&A activity continues to heat up, with companies like Symantec snapping up interesting startups this is a great segment to place your bets. It used to be that startups would target a Cisco acquisition as their exit strategy - now they are targeting large security companies.

3.) Anti-Spam. Companies like MailFrontier, IronPort and others are getting funded and getting traction. The good news - the problem will continue to get worse. The bad news (for end users) - the problem will continue to get worse.

4.) WiFi. This will continue to be a rapidly growing segment. With companies like NetGear successfully pulling off IPOs, acquisitions like the one that Cisco managed with Linksys, etc. things are ripe here. I can finally get free Wi Fi access at two of my favorite coffee shops in the area, and for less than $30 per month I can add T-Mobile and be connected at every Starbucks. The challenge here will be figuring out who can actually make any money.

That's my short list. Over the next few weeks I'll be covering each of these segments in the 280 Insider newsletter and writing more here in the 280 Group Blog...

Silicon Valley 4.0

Yesterday I attended the Silicon Valley 4.0 conference put on by Garage.com. The idea behind the conference was to discuss "the future of the future".

Silicon Valley 1.0 was the Semiconductor revolution. 2.0 was the personal computer era. 3.0 was the Internet era. So what will be 4.0?

The panels were good - top tier VCs, a conversation with Mike Moritz and Eric Schmidt about Google, demos of interesting new products (including Jeff Hawkins demoing the Treo 600), and as a special guest the demographer for the United Nations, who gave us fascinating statistics about growth rates, India, China, immigration and several other things.

But I have to say, there was no real hint at what Silicon Valley 4.0 will be. Biotech, wireless, nanotech - these were all discussed. But no one said anything with any kind of certainty or knowing.

The big lesson in my opinion came from the first panel - Les Vadasz of Intel representing 1.0 Semiconductors, John Sculley representing 2.0 PCs and Judy Estrin representing 3.0 Internet.

The take away? "No one really knows it until it is happening full force. Even with waves 1, 2 and 3 we could tell we were onto something but we had no idea how big it was actually going to be".

If you see what you think is a wave bet big if you are going to bet...

Musical Chairs

These past few weeks I have met with about two dozen old colleagues, many of which I connected with at the Claris and Apple reunions. Almost all of the ones working for companies have had one thing in common: they HATE their current jobs. Not everyone, but I would say a good 80% are fed up, tired and worn down.

I read a statistic that something like 60% of the people in the United States out there are dissatisfied with their jobs right now.

So once things pick up a bit and opportunities are available, what will happen? I predict we'll see a bit of panic by the big employers who have mistreated their employees. If you are IBM, Sun, HP/Compaq or any of the other companies that used to pride themselves on "no layoffs" and have shown that you view people as expendable temporary resources you are going to have a big challenge on your hands. Companies like these used to be able to keep employees for a long time based on loyalty and the promise that the company would take care of them, but not any more.

People here in Silicon Valley will switch jobs rapidly if they get the chance and feel any kind of a safety net in the economy picking up and the unemployment numbers dropping.

Maybe there will be a market for employee retention consultants...