8 Growing Industries With The Greatest Potential (Part Two)
My fascination with the world of business, startups and technology continues in this Part Two of an ongoing series where I examine some of the quickest growing industries either with technology at it’s core or that are being revolutionized by technology. Read Part One Here.
In this post, I have also invited a fellow entrepreneur, Gabriel Kruse, Founder of DUUL, and Eric Agnew, Washington State Candidate for Congress, to lend their expertise on a few industries they are interested in.
9) Food & Grocery Delivery
Food delivery can take many forms. Delivery services like UberEats and Seamless provide on-demand delivery for local restaurants. I’m a sucker for the convenience of this one. Hot food from some of your favorite restaurants delivered to your door (or curbside) in under an hour? I’m in.
Then there is the recent growth of services offering on-demand fresh grocery delivery like online retail giant Amazon Fresh. With Fresh, you can get groceries you select delivered to your door with just a few clicks. Because it’s not offered where we live, we haven’t had the chance to try it yet, but it sounds pretty cool.
Now, services like Blue Apron, Plated and HelloFresh offer subscription-based packages where customers can order a certain amount of pre-planned and pre-portioned meals to be delivered each week. Depending on the service you choose, meals are generally around $8–12. You’re only sent the amount of each ingredient you need, so utilizing services like these help people avoid having food spoil in their refrigerator. There are a ton of advantages I hear from people that have tried these and continue to use them. Mariah and I are on our third meal from Plated with another box coming later this week and it already has her stamp of approval (which is really, really, really tough to get). We may try one of the others out to see the difference, but for now, we’re Team Plated!
10) eSports
By Guest Writer Gabriel Kruse, Founder of DUUL
Esports (or competitive video gaming) started as what many people thought to be a fad. It drew modest crowds of nerds and fellow gamers in the the early 2000s with games like Quake and Starcraft.
Then in 2002 Major League Gaming was launched and hosted the first televised tournaments for Halo and Starcraft: Brood War. Since then, PC and Console titles alike have began to draw followings in the millions. Live streaming platform Twitch.tv (where gamers live stream their gameplay and chat with audiences) generates over 100 million unique views a month with an average time on site of over an hour. They recently sold to Amazon for $912 Million in 2014.
With followers in droves on platforms like Youtube, Instagram, Twitch, and many more; larger brands began to find ways to enter the space. Redbull and Acer are consistent sponsors of the League of Legends World Series that sold out the Staples center in 2013, and generates more viewers than the MLB world series and NBA final four games. With this newfound attention, advertisers and Major teams from every city are pouring millions in Professional gaming teams, arenas and sponsorship in hopes to generate large revenues. Investors in the space include the New York Yankees, Philadelphia 76ers, Shaquille O’Neal, and many more.
However professional teams and large events aren’t the only opportunities. Several softwares have emerged looking to add value to the competitive gaming ecosystem. From an A.I. and Machine learning fueled coaching platform Mobalytics, to the blockchain-based competition platform Firstblood.io that uses smart contracts to verify winners. The space will continue to attract high-profile advertisers and investors alike.
11) Drones
One of the sexier things on the list. The drones of today are many times more advanced than the remote controlled helicopters from when I was a child. Camera-equipped drones have brought high-quality aerial footage and photography to the masses. They have self-stabilizing features, auto-follow, auto-return home, obstacle-sensing and a plethora of other helpful capabilities. Drones haven’t just proven to be useful for photographers and videographers, but athletes, adventurers, engineers and even farmers have found a way to capitalize on the new technology.
They can range in size from one that fits in the palm of your hand to drones that are larger than the average human wingspan. Amazon also plans to use drones to air deliver small packages, although regulations have prevented Amazon Prime Air from realizing this vision so far. I’m not really sure about a world where drones are carrying packages just a few dozen feet above our heads, but it may just have to be something we’ll get used to.
12) Cryptocurrency
By Guest Writer Gabriel Kruse, Founder of DUUL
Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are such a hot topic that is seems almost adding to the noise to write this post. Most of the hype has been driven by the astronomical growth of bitcoin, ethereum and other token prices over the last six months. While these tokens do create a rather attractive alternative investment opportunity, they also have a large impact on how certain organizations will operate in the future if marketers and advertisers can only hone in on what makes these technologies superior to the ones on the market today.
Blockchain companies and organizations that use the protocol have a significant advantage in that their adoption is incentivized through the distribution of a token that could appreciate in value. I.e. a smart contract (digital contract that is executed based on a condition of time or money) hosted on the ethereum blockchain. Seeing as how the current ETH price is over $300 at the time of writing this post, and a piece of paper is almost free, there is significant upside if you can make the technology adoptable by the general public.
Blockchain certainly has a far way to go in evangelizing why it is superior to person of the general public (like how apple describes its latest chip upgrade ‘70% faster’, etc.). It is not quite yet an upgrade or selling point in the public eye.
Note: There is a lot to cover on this topic that we can cover in later installments :)
13) Healthcare
The healthcare industry affects more people’s lives than any other industry. Over the coming years, we will likely see specialty doctors, hospitals and care facilities growing in popularity. The idea of going into a one-size-fits-all brick-and-mortar location for even the smallest checkups is antiquated. Home healthcare services will grow as the desire for convenience becomes more and more important in our lives. These services can include thing like physical therapy, counseling, speech therapy and dietary and nutritional services, among others.
Digital and virtual healthcare experiences will also continue to rise in popularity. Will your Doctor be able to diagnose you with cancer from a smartphone video chat? Not likely. But there are certainly some checkups or Q&A sessions that can be conducted remotely, which could lower overhead for the hospitals and, in turn, drive down costs for everybody.
Wearable tracking devices that provide personalized data can help physicians and patients make smarter decisions about their health. Technology is dramatically shifting the healthcare industry, both giving patients more control and providing physicians more options to treat or cure their patients. Overall, it’s a win-win as long as profits don’t come before patients.
14) Digital Marketing
As social media becomes more and more prevalent in our lives, digital marketing will follow suit. Brands are competing with thousands of others and can easily get lost in the mix. More specifically, with the shift from chronological (based on time) to algorithmic (based on perceived interests and importance) feeds on popular social media platforms, your post may only be seen by a small portion of your followers. The most popular social media sites “conveniently” offer to promote or boost your post, exchanging dollars for views (sometimes called impressions) or clicks. Luckily, they do offer the ability for you to highly target your posts individually to the most relevant people in your niche.
With all of the hype about social media, digital marketing isn’t restricted to just Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat & Pinterest. Your digital marketing strategy should also include your website, your SEO and your online advertising, to name a few, and should factor in data from your internal data analytics and market research. Each brand may find success on different platforms and mediums and the need to explore those options and gain more exposure is needed more than ever.
Shameless self promotion: Digital marketing is one of the areas we focus on at DKTB Design. Get in touch if you need some help if you’re ready to step up your digital marketing game.
15) Clean Energy
By Guest Writer Eric Agnew, Washington State Candidate for Congress
There are mountains of empirical evidence showing that our climate is warming, and that increasing levels of carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere is the cause. There is no use denying that humans are contributing to this, we are the cause and have been increasingly since the industrial era began (the good people at NASA have great data on this). Just this week there was a new report that says investment in clean energy needs to triple in order to halt catastrophic global warming. We are seeing real, tangible, costly effects of climate change impact our daily lives now. In fact, the wildfires and hurricanes from the past summer are still costing the United States $200M per day, as F.E.M.A continues to respond to weather related events. In Eastern Washington where I live, both our quality of life and our economy is being impacted daily, from lower crop yields in our wheat farms to less back to school shopping during smoky summer days. If we don’t begin to curb this trend immediately, the effects may become irreversible.
Thankfully, the problem is also a tremendous opportunity! Clean Energy jobs are growing, and fast. Globally, the renewable energy sector employed 9.8 million people in 2016. Take solar power as an example: 1 in 50 new jobs created last year were in the solar energy market, and solar employment expanded last year 17x faster than the total US economy. The price point has come down with this scale, now costing 60% less than it did previously, making it far more realistic for homeowners, businesses and utilities to invest in. Our society will always have a dependence on fossil fuels, but we can reduce our reliance on them by creating a more diverse energy portfolio. We should continue to make clean energy investments in not just solar, but biofuels, wind and hydro power also. This is a great win-win, good for the environment and good for the economy.
Shameless self promotion: Eric is running as an Independent to represent Eastern Washington (WA-05) in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2018. Check out www.AgnewForWashington.com to learn more.
16) Cyber Security
Cyber crimes are quickly ballooning into one of the most rampant forms of criminal activity. Individuals, companies, non-profits and even governments have been the target of cyber warfare. Identities get stolen, private photos get leaked, aggregated data, project details and private conversations can all become public knowledge overnight. More often than not in the private sector, the vulnerabilities exploited were known by the organization for at least one year. Gartner predicts that 99% of vulnerabilities exploited through 2020 will follow this trend.
We all use our computers, tablets and phones for some of the most important aspects of our lives. As more and more of our lives shift into the digital world and we bring more smart devices into our homes, the need for cyber security will grow exponentially.
This is Part Two of an ongoing series where we examine some of the quickest growing industries either with technology at it’s core or that are being revolutionized by technology. Read Part One Here.
About the authors
Dakota Berg is an entrepreneur, designer and creator originally from the Pacific Northwest, but living and working in Manhattan. Lead Designer & Partner at SportsCastr.
Gabriel Kruse is an entrepreneur from Arizona. Co-Founder, Head of Growth Marketing & Product Manager at DUUL.
Eric Agnew is a Candidate for Congress in Washington’s 5th District.
