Mary Meeker:Queen of the Internet Speaks in 2018
Once a year everyone in Tech looks to one woman- Mary Meeker. The internet oracle spent two decades at Morgan Stanley, working on things like Google IPO, before joining the VC fund Kleiner Perkins in 2014. Every year she delivers an Internet trends report to the world and her predictions are scarily often right….. ( check her out on Wiki if you want to know more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/mary_meeker )
She called email as being the internet’s killer application in 1995, predicted browsing through information services to be the next big breakthrough and foresaw Amazon’s rise to the top. This year she had a 294 page presentation in 30 minutes covering everything from smart phones to education and property and tech competition.
Full copy of presentation Link here: http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends
My key take outs:
- Discovery vs Digital : consumers are using social media for discovery more and more, and then going onto shop. Retailers are focusing on Amazon but the Facebook threat is under the radar. Discovery is less in store now. 80% people report Facebook as the platform to see a new product (with 60% Instagram) and 55% people claim to end up buying a product online after discovering on social.
- Shopping & Entertainment blending together. entertainment is becoming a big part of the shopping experience. Owning the pre-&-post transaction keeps the transaction
- Discovery sites developing commerce. Commerce sites developing discovery (Amazon has higher search levels that Google in US now) and discovery sites are developing Commerce ( Facebook & Google shop)
- Consumers want location based personalisation: Google searches that include the phrase near me ( eg restaurants near me ) skyrocketed 900% in last 2 years. This tells us that consumers actually do want location based personalisation so retailers and restaurants have a clear directive to step up.
- Personalisation = higher customer satisfaction . Brand that personalise score higher customer satisfaction levels. Customers are beginning to expect it.
- Subscription drives Sales: users are increasingly willing to pay a monthly fee for easy access to content, using an ad-supported limited access tiers to upsell subscriptions
- China is coming: Alibaba + Amazon have similar focus areas, Amazon may have higher revenue but Alibaba has higher volume and is aggressively expanding into countries like India and Indonesia. Both are bundling services with a breadth and price that competitors can’t match. China now hosts 9/20 top global internet companies while US hosts 9/20. all are poised to collide as they all seek to invade developing nations to find growth.
- Just Teach yourself: Opportunity and growth of cheaper online learning: YouTube saw 1 billion hours of educational viewing: Opportunity for Open University in UK and global market for UK education after Brexit!
- AI is sexy but don’t miss the simple & obvious low hanging fruit. better utilisation of Wifi and Networks can connect consumers’ offline and online shopping and preferences to drive short term growth but AI if developed well will help drive longer growth
- Privacy Paradox. Organisations are caught between using their data to provide a better Customer Experience & violating customer privacy. GDPR is taking a lead, but consumers in China are more relaxed about how their data is used : 38% China citizens willing to share data for better services , compared to 25% in US and 16% in UK. That means China could gain a data advantage that lets it more rapidly develop technologies & service
for a full view of presentation ( all 294 pages ) http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends
Data Pulses storytelling 