Ron Conway’s Confidential Investment Guide: The Tech Megatrends

Am I the only one that looks at that chart and thinks "huh?!? half those spaces are already saturated"?

Sure, that's his manifesto to fund now (ie companies funded today probably were founded chosen 6+ months ago, and those ideas would be fresher then). Plus he gets to pick the cream of the crop.

But would anyone on HN seriously consider starting a startup today based around check-ins or a Groupon clone? Both spaces seem totally done to me - there are plenty of startups in those spaces and so you can only compete on niche (thus smaller market) or if you can totally disrupt with a genius idea (unlikely). And in both of those areas (and others in Conway's list) you have first mover advantage and network effect against you.

Seems to me the trick is to consider what will be on his next list and start working on that now.

I'm reminded of the Chinese Box discussion (related to Turing Tests?): put a man in a box, and give him an English -> Chinese phrase book. Feed him phrases on strips of paper in English - his job is to look up the phrase, write the Chinese equivalent on the back, and hand the paper back. Voila - you have a translating machine. But can we say the machine is able to translate from English to Chinese?

Knowing Conway's investment guide in no way qualifies you to pick the right people or ideas to invest in. It's a Chinese Box, and you don't speak Chinese.

(You know, for metaphorical instances of 'You' and 'Chinese'.)

Edit: It's the Chinese Room Argument by John Searle - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room . Searle saw it fit to give the man a whole room to complete his tasks!

Maybe it's because I've been reading HN, but this seems pretty backwards-looking to me.

Agreed that its generally backwards looking and at times just strange (urban entrepreneur?? really?), but there were a few points that resonated with me: 1) Conway's point that UI/UX is becoming far more important. Hipmunk seems almost entirely based on taking a crappy UX and turning it into an awesome one; there's lots more room for disruption in other industries as well 2) Point that there's a data issue-- there's tons of social information and monetization strategies are still work-in-process

I fear TC is going to dribble this out, one barely-readable slide JPEG at a time.

Where does Flipboard fall in this chart?

Social? Flipboard is primarily a consumption experience with limited commenting and sharing mechanisms. Granted, those features exist, but are not the key focus.

Mobile? Because it's on an iPad? I wonder if Ron is actually talking about in-your-pocket iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc. and not larger laptop replacement products such as tablets.

Hmmm... 6 out of 7 of those fit Foursquare. I'm not so sure that this is 7 megatrends and not just one or two.