Living in a paperwork-less future

"Once you're living in the future in some respect, the way to notice startup ideas is to look for things that seem to be missing” —Paul Graham

"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." – William Gibson

Imagine: it is the near future. A mortgage application is a one-tap action on your smartphone. So is renewal of your driver’s license with the DMV. Paying your last parking ticket is a just one tap too. A car loan? A visa application? Life insurance? Car insurance? An estate plan? All a few taps. 

The promise of this has been a long time in the making. The next 20 years is not going to be like the last 20 years, however. Now's the time. Why? Because of a number of overwhelming new platform forces: 

Smartphone adoption — Late adopter industries are being unlocked because now far more people on the planet can have an always-on, cheap, ubiquitous computer. Android devices are $150 with no contract, today. A cheap tablet or smartphone can replace kiosks, point of sale devices, and PC’s on desks. You'd be crazy to say construction would be an industry where you grow a software business even 5 years ago, but that's exactly what Plangrid is doing bringing blueprints online. 

Digital signing — HelloSign is at the forefront of this. Instacart recently used the HelloSign API to be able to onboard their contract delivery workers far faster than ever. If you can sign legal documents instantly, you bring the friction of getting business down to nearly zero. 

Payments systems — StripeCrowdtilt OpenBalanced and WePay are at the forefront of this. It’s never been easier for a startup to stand on the shoulders of these giants and be able to do real transactions instantly. Coinbase does the same allowing anyone to receive payment using bitcoin, unlocking worldwide commerce with a universal currency. These things just didn’t exist even a few years ago. 

Legacy API's — Any system must work with all legacy systems. They’re getting filled in by both platform API services like Lob, Twilio, Plivo, and HelloFax. Not everything in the stack has to live in the future. 

Anti-fraud — Services like Sift Science are bringing world-class machine learning and anti-fraud technologies to every site and service. Online verification and personal data room services are coming online that will let people do large transactions with people they just met. Airbnb was able to use Facebook and Twitter data to verify people and make them more human, such that you could do business with them. LendUp is doing the same for payday lending, adding more data to the antiquated to the scammy world of payday lending. 

Killing paper-based purchase orders, application forms, approval queues and replacing them with all-digital direct-to-consumer experiences is happening right now, and in every walk of life. 

In the 1980's, Walmart started using IT to start working directly with manufacturers and cut waste out of their supply chain. Today, the company represents 2% of annual US GDP. That same thing is finally coming to all the other industries, and they're being brought to the world by small teams of talented founders building on the fundamental platforms mentioned above. 

New services are better, cheaper, and faster. As a result, these new businesses will be built shockingly fast. It’s not twilight for young startups trying to make something great. It is dawn.