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Ron Conway's Three Mega-Trends of The Internet

If you want to know what arguably the most successful angel investor is focusing on these days, check out this Interview of Ron Conway on TechCrunch

He discusses three “Mega-trends” along with some of these highlights:

1) Real-Time Data — Any company that employs crowd-systems.

This is the category for 70% of Conway’s current investments

Examples of real-time data companies Conway has invested in are Twitter, Four-Square and Hunch. Quora (which Ron didn’t invest in) is another example.

2)  Growth of Facebook and Twitter — Social media is here to stay.

“The social phenomenon is consumers’ willingness to share more…including sharing where they’re at.”

His comments regarding Facebook

“Facebook’s revenues of hundreds of millions of revenues make it “a very real company.”

“Facebook is becoming the Web — everything you need is there. It’s a walled garden the way AOL used to be…except in this Walled garden, everything is there.”

His comments regarding Twitter

“Ads could be more relevant on Twitter than anywhere on the Web.”

3) Social Commerce or Flash Marketing/(or Flash Sales)

Examples include Guilt Groupe, Groupon, etc.

Conway points out that these are also all real-time data companies.

Conway had an interesting observation about when startup founders (companies like Twitter or FourSquare) should sell out:

“The older I get the more I want to see entrepreneurs (like Twitter founders) play it out…see how big you can get on your own.”

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