Twenty Tingling Trends for the 2018 Entrepreneur. Are You Asking Yourself -- Sup With 2018?

What a fantastic group of people we get to work with at Startup Grind -- and a huge part of this amazing work and team is YOU.

Let me brag on all of us a minute. We have the 300 wonderful Directors in 300 cities who host the speaker events each month -- complete with yummy food and great conversation. We are so proud and happy to be a part of your lives as you go out into the brave world as entrepreneurs and build your businesses.

We are humbled that so many of you are willing to share your entrepreneurial journey by writing wonderful pieces that explain what you have learned along your way to success. These posts are from first time founders all the way through those who have been in the slugging it out and grinding in the business trenches for years. Our Blog has many valuable articles where you can find the answers to the most difficult questions of business. We love it. Thank you!

Just this week we have had several great quick reads for your business:

1. Five Things to Avoid in Your First Year as a Founder

2. We Need to Talk About How Business is Dealing With Big Data

Here are the business trends that we believe will be the biggies for 2018. Let us know what you think.

  1. Artificial Intelligence -- no escaping this -- look out for speakers like: Dr. Andrew Ng and Dr. Fei-Fei Li, who are the leaders in this space.
  2. Live interactions coming over social media.
  3. The much ballyhooed millennials will welcome the gen z's.
  4. Wages will rise – but so will everything else
  5. Social Learning will again become a better source of strength than remote learning (This hasn’t happened for over 10 years).
  6. Live Streaming will be screaming in Video content.
  7. Finally the message is being heard that serving your community is important. Not to brag -- but that sentiment has been in Startup Grind’s motto from the beginning (Help others before helping yourself).
  8. Healthcare and Marketing will make a move to being more about solving a problem for someone. Max Levchin (known as one of the top 100 innovators in the world) will speak on the issues he has been involved with including PayPal and Glow, specific to a woman's healthcare.
  9. Blockchain will take off like a rocket.
  10. Our performance will use augmented intelligence. Even our calendars will calculate, accommodate, and integrate, keeping track of business and life in one easy to follow life/productivity hack.
  11. Automation (anything) growth will explode - self-driving cars, productivity tools - you name it. Follow industry leaders such as Slack, (Cal Henderson, co-founder will be with us), Cruise Automation and many more to stay on trend.
  12. Machine learning will become a traditional method. Some people won't even remember the "olden days." One part of machine learning is keep up on ecommerce security (Vinny Lingham from Civic will be at the conference to cover this delicate issue).
  13. Virtual everything -- as far as VR can be pushed in a year -- it will raise the bar far higher than we think.
  14. The sharing economy will still prevail and expand.
  15. A sad, pathetic year for the brick and mortar -- unless someone brings in a new innovation.
  16. Unreasonable purchases from lax bottom lines will still be present (Ya know, please let us throw tons of money away on your company that isn't worth much). You may need a VC to make your purchase. (Jeff Jordan of Andreessen Horowitz will be at the conference.)
  17. The fidgety five will keep fiddling around with everything. They will make life miserable -- but then again -- sometimes miserable is interesting. But -- watch 'em. Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google.
  18. It will be more important than ever to get ready and move forward with your goals. To quote Nike, "Just Do It."
  19. The cloud will crack and cause a few showers -- maybe even break apart a little. Maybe you can own a little piece of your own cloud? Do you have an extra server?
  20. People who innovate and come up with a great idea about something that will solve a problem for someone else will rule 2018. The creatives like the Ubers, the Airbnb-ers, the drive your car under the ocean or beyond the moon, life hacks for productivity -- all of these -- plus better social media contacting and support.

LAST -- THE STARTUP GRIND GLOBAL CONFERENCE.

This event will be held February 13, 14, 2018. For our friends who come each year – yes the conference is in our home -- Redwood City. Join us to get insights on all the hot tech trends in 2018. 

We are so excited to have you with us again. We are expecting about 7000 friends and guests. There will be lots of inspiration and entertainment for all who attend this year. And PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, come up and introduce yourselves and let us know what we can do to help you.

We are here for you. 

As we head in to 2018 – keep those letters coming. Keep the suggestions coming so we can help you where you need it most as an entrepreneur.

Hopefully you were able to rest and renew your energies for a successful New Year. The Best to you, our friends -- for 2018 -- and the very best to you from The Startup Grind Team. See you in a few weeks at Global.