At Forerunner, we dedicate ourselves to understanding values shifts and technological shifts. Both are rare and defining: values shifts are rooted in a fundamental evolution of human needs, and technological shifts underpin new pathways that advance people's way of living. In this current moment, we're in the midst of one of each, presenting a generational growth opportunity.
The values shift underway is born out of consumers' broad sense of fatigue and overwhelm from a culture that's now dominated by hyper-access and hyper-consumerism. The tech industry has fueled this: the lion's share of the past decade's startup have touted democratized access, and it’s created a flurry of different options, decisions and tasks that newly fall onto consumers' plates. This access is now working against consumers, who feel paralyzed by the sheer volume of choice. As a result, we now see a refreshed desire for experts and services that edit the vastness of what’s available, present the best possible options instead of more options, and do things for us instead of enabling us to do it ourselves.
AI — the technological shift underway — is uniquely suited to drive the tech industry's shift from Access to Edit. Because at its core, the promise of AI is to effectively edit our digital worlds. It’s about capturing consumers’ intent and nuance to deliver services and personalized outcomes quickly and with more comprehensive context than any one person could have themselves.
In this deck, which we debuted at Fortune Brainstorm Tech this week, we cover this values shift and technology shift — and introduce our framework for how to build a winning consumer business in this domain:
- Consumer appetite: What we know about where consumers are most eager to use AI in their lives and what they anticipate from the experience
- All eyes on quality: Traditionally, products and services are measured against price, convenience and quality, and typically only able to optimize for two in contrast to the prevailing alternative. The past decade has focused on price and convenience, but the next decade with AI will focus on quality.
- Magic and Trust: These are the two essentially building blocks in this new era. We extrapolate how we define Magic (relief and delight) and Trust (”do it with me” and “do it for me”), as well as where we believe is the best place to build from with each — and how.
If you're building here, we welcome discussion and questions: investments@forerunnerventures.com.
You can download the report here.