Erik sits down with Donnie Dinch (@donnie), Michael Galpert (@msg) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg), to follow up on the projects they were working on a year ago when they all got together at the end of 2017 to talk about consumer social on one of our first podcast episodes. They discuss what’s changed since then and what they see ahead in the consumer social landscape.

They discuss some of the unexpected twists and turns their ventures took over the course of 2018 and some of their lessons learned from the year. They talk about some of the trends that emerged during 2018 and which ones they expect to come in the year ahead. Greg points out that the big players in the space are distracted and a lot of people have given up on the space, so opportunity is ripe. He says “there have never been fewer people working on consumer social than in 2019.”

They talk about where they think the next unicorn in consumer social will come from and what some of the most promising existing companies are, as well as some of the ideas they’d like to see built. They go deep on a number of trends, including audio as a medium of communication, the crossover of games and consumer social, and social fitness.

The four of them also talk about why Apple is in such a good position to build something great in social (but that they never will) and play “long-short,” where Erik names a company in the space and they say whether they’re long or short and why.

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Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Colin Campbell is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.