Our funds began with community. The “social” in Social Starts refers to social/mobile tech. One of our first investments was Pinterest.
But we moved away from community rather quickly. After the burst of innovation in the 2007-2009 era that led to Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and the rest of the first generation, community became genericized. Thousands of startups were copying the dominant platforms. Connecting like-minded people over mobile became like oxygen; it was everywhere.
However, heading into 2019, our research showed signs of a new kind of “emergent community.” This new generation was striking in how much it differed from today’s dominant community players.
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Early communities were horizontal; new are vertical
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Early were defined by scale; new are defined by being small, deep, and trustworthy
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Early were 100% online; new are a hybrid of online and the real world
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Early were started by men, and incorporated women later; new are led by women, with men co-participating or secondary
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Early were defined merely by simple connection; new are defined by shared stories and experiences
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The first generation of communities lost trust, people felt at risk from them; the new generation of communities is focused on rebuilding trust (for example, early communities allowed ads, which led to mistrust; new communities are eschewing ads)
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New-gen communities focus on stories and common experiences; they get revenue from commerce derived from those shared experiences or by shifting the power dynamic in their particular domain
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New are messaging ascendant, and therefore mobile-centric; the web is a sideline, if that, for this generation of community
Based on all we see, our interest in community has rekindled. We now view community as a powerful element in our active focus areas. Where community can be tied to great products with great stories or to transformative science, magic can happen.
Nowhere is this truer than with Health Communities, which is our central community focus for 2020.
Health Communities are expressions of a broader megatrend: Consumers seizing the high ground in health’s future. New health science is moving care closer to consumers. Health communities are a mechanism for shifting power to consumers through a deep exchange of experience and information. These communities are growing in importance in bio, neuro, biome, food, and other areas that matter to us.
Our 2020 primary community focus on Health Communities should reflect these fundamentals:
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They should have vigorous populations of super-users, a narrow focus, and a novel business model derived from the community’s most critical interactions.
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Incorporating AI is an important component since nudging has a big impact on engagement and continued use of communities like these.
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We see Europe and the US as different when in key aspects of health communities:
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Dissemination of drug information to consumers is much more tightly controlled in Europe than in the US. That will require the involvement of professionals or companies in European health communities.
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Hybrids of online consumer communities and MDs have potential in both the US and Europe, but are more important in Europe because only the MDs can distribute key information.
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We need to recognize that communities in this area that are strong businesses are rare, but the winners will be huge, so it is worth the hunt.
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In particular, we should seek communities for women/girls under stress. This ties into Fem Tech, Mental Health, and the forceful women-supporting-women worldwide phenomenon.
We seek these factors in Health Community investments:
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Using technology to level the power of traditional health care providers
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Overcoming the constraints of finance and business models
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Objective truth rules in modern medicine
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Understanding that scale is a bug, not a feature
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Building honest broker platforms
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Designing for internal member motivation
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Architecting user-driven change into design
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Reconciling opposing forces of change within the community
While health communities will be our primary in this area, we retain a secondary focus on communities that create content specifically delightful to their constituents. Our current successful investments Medal.TV for gaming and The Hustle for aspirant entrepreneurs are examples of the value we can find here.
The teens and young adults of the rising generation are eager to connect and unite around their myriad of shared experiences, and we are eager to invest in the best new companies that can best facilitate those powerful connections.
