More than six years ago, Mark Zuckerberg laid out an argument to his executive team about Facebook’s investment in virtual and augmented reality.
In it, he noted:
“Our vision is that VR / AR will be the next major computing platform after mobile in about 10 years. It can be even more ubiquitous than mobile—especially once we reach AR—since you can have it always on… Once you have a good VR / AR system, you no longer need to buy phones or TVs or many other physical objects—they can just become apps in a digital store.”
Facebook’s name change represents a belief that we’re now on the cusp of the consumer version of Web3—or, at least, certain elements of it.
There is going to be an onslaught of “what the future holds” content around consumer, marketing, and commerce.
Read it, sure.
But also remember that even as things change, they’re often still the same—and that it’s often better to build a business strategy by looking at the future through this lens.
From Jeff Bezos in 2012:
“I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' And that is a very interesting question; it's a very common one. I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change in the next 10 years?' And I submit to you that that second question is actually the more important of the two -- because you can build a business strategy around the things that are stable in time. ... [I]n our retail business, we know that customers want low prices, and I know that's going to be true 10 years from now. They want fast delivery; they want vast selection. It's impossible to imagine a future 10 years from now where a customer comes up and says, 'Jeff I love Amazon; I just wish the prices were a little higher,' [or] 'I love Amazon; I just wish you'd deliver a little more slowly.' Impossible. And so the effort we put into those things, spinning those things up, we know the energy we put into it today will still be paying off dividends for our customers 10 years from now. When you have something that you know is true, even over the long term, you can afford to put a lot of energy into it.”
Should Zuckerberg—or someone else for that matter—succeed in building a centralized, widely accessible version of Web3 for the masses there will be plenty that does not change when it comes to building and selling consumer products.
We will still buy products based on wants and needs. We will evaluate on utility and emotions. What we choose to buy will be heavily influenced by a product’s availability.
These are historical constants.
So, your product will still matter, how you position and distribute that product will still matter, the design of the packaging will still matter.
The list goes on.
So, read about the future, yes. Let your imagination run a bit. Spot opportunities for arbitrage. But also remember: the future won’t look all that different—at least not when it comes to the principles.