What does Traction look like? Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield showed us last November at DEMO Fall, where he shared some slides on Slack’s incredible growth. Slack is a communications tool for teams with more than 300,000 active users. It is growing so fast that it was able to raise $120 million from Google Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Andreessen Horowitz and others just before Butterfield appeared onstage.

Slack is a communication tool for teams, where everyone can chat privately, share files, and tap into other systems like Dropbox and Zendesk. But in order to grow, Slack needs to convince a whole team to use its product. “In terms of traction,” notes Butterfield in the video, “conversion was all about getting a whole team to convert instead of an individual. Usually there is one crankypants who could veto [adoption].”

Slack’s traction slides don’t look like smooth growth curves. Rather they show step functions of growth. Even when you look at activity at the level of an individual company, it usually starts with a trial period with nothing much happening, and then all of a sudden it pops and everyone is using it. For instance, here is the activity for one of Slack’s customers, an online media company:

And here is another customer traction chart:

I’ve embedded Stewart’s entire presentation at the bottom of this post.

Slack’s growth looks anemic at first, and then it just goes gangbusters because once a team is committed everyone has to get on Slack to keep up with what is going on at their company. For Slack, the key was to understand their conversion metrics. As noted in this recent article on Slack at First Round Review, “From 0 to $1B – Slack’s Founder Shares Their Epic Launch Strategy,” the key is to know your company’s “magic number.” Excerpt:

What is the next big thing? Where will technology take us? I struggle with these questions as I travel the world in search of the next great products to launch at DEMO. One thing I’ve learned is that innovation is distributed. Not evenly, but there are pockets of it everywhere—in London, Moscow, Sao Paolo, New York City, and, of course, Silicon Valley, where we will bring all of this innovation together next week at DEMO Fall in Santa Clara, CA (register here). Silicon Valley’s most important export is its startup culture, which is taking hold everywhere.

Next week, 41 products will launch over two days at DEMO Fall (along with incredible Founder School speakers from Evernote, Waze, Yelp, Fitbit, AngelList ,and more). I’ve personally met and spent time with most of the founders behind these products as part of the selection and rehearsal process. They are all tackling real problems with clever technology and product design.

While their identities must remain secret until next week, they collectively point to the future where technology is taking us. Below are 5 trends you will see onstage at DEMO Fall across Mobile, Cloud, Health, Work, and Hardware/Wearables. (I also talk more about the upcoming event this video interview with Beet TV)

1. Mobile Is The Interface (To The Real World)

There are now more mobile smartphones and tablets than PCs, and tablet sales alone are expected to surpass PC sales this quarter. Touch computing, which seemed so novel just a few years ago, is now the norm. As we carry these computers in our pockets, we are of course always connected to the network. But the network is also always connected to us, and mobile apps are becoming the interface between the network and the real world. These apps are aware of where we are, who is around us, what is around us, and what services are available to help us live richer lives or work more productively. As the physical world becomes increasingly digitized and mapped out, we use our mobile devices to consume information about, and transact in, the real world as much as we use them to traverse the purely online world. It will soon become difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

2. Cloudware Is Getting Serious

The flip side of the mobile coin is the cloud. Mobile devices are the new endpoints of the Internet, but the heavy lifting still happens on the network. And the capabilities of computing on the cloud keeps growing. The difference between what you can do in a browser and what you can do on a dedicated PC is disappearing. Even the most compute-intensive client applications that require a lot of horsepower are finding full expression in the browser. For enterprises, cloud computing is leveling the playing field between large and small companies since everyone has access to the same sophisticated applications that require large-scale computing clusters. And the cloud is also opening up opportunities to transform common business functions and processes into cloud-based services. Entire corporate departments and backend services are now being replicated in software on the cloud.

3. Control Your Data, And You Can Control Your Health

If there is one new market where innovation is visibly popping, it is personal health. One of the upsides of carrying around powerful computers in our pockets everywhere we go is that we can use them to constantly track our physical activity and take control over our health data. They also can serve as the brains for what would otherwise be expensive medical or monitoring devices, which can collect data from our bodies more economically and on a more regular basis. If information is power, that is doubly true when it comes to our health. Yet most of us don’t have a good handle on our own health data. Mobile, coupled with smart analytics and personalized databases in the cloud, changes that equation.

4. These Aren’t Your Dad’s Productivity Apps

The confluence of mobile and cloud is also changing the nature of work. We are always connected to our colleagues and customers, always communicating and collaborating with them, whether it is during office hours, our commutes, or a quick brain burst on the weekend. Productivity apps are evolving to this new style of work, constantly keeping us alerted to the latest changes in the market and inside our businesses. Killer work apps are no longer standalone software on your desktop. The spreadsheet jockey is no longer a lone gunman. To remain a hero, he must now share his work in the cloud, and it can’t look ugly or confusing when looks at it on his mobile phone. Good design is forcing its way into the workplace through our pocket computers.

5. Hardware Is The New Software

Mobile phones and tablets are just the most visible manifestation of the shift in computing away from PCs. Wearable computing is just getting off the ground (we’ll have a panel on Wearables and will debut several Google Glass apps onstage). What happens when the computer is literally in front of your face the whole time or you wear it like a bracelet and it responds to your movements? You become the interface. But it is not just wearables. The resurgence in hardware products, especially smart consumer devices that can be crowdfunded, is creating a very tangible Internet of Things in our homes and offices. As I like to say, hardware is the new software:

In an era when anyone can be a maker, manufacturing is like server capacity—it is available to every entrepreneur on the planet. If you can imagine it, you can build it.

And that in its essence is what being a founder is all about: imagining a product and turning it into reality. Register for DEMO Fall to see what today’s founders are dreaming up next.

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Last week at DEMO Mobile, Vinod Khosla came onstage to share his unique perspective on building startups, mobile, and more. We just put up the video of the entire discussion, which you can watch above.

Khosla is a contrarian thinker, which comes through in the interview. “The way to address new areas is not have a plan,” he argues, but rather “a plan to build a plan.”

Exploration and experimentation is so key for startups. He compares the early days of a startup to a driver on a roundabout. “It’s worth your while to go around in circles to explore what might be down each road,” he says. If you pick a road too early, “it will only lead to one place.” Founders need to take some time to figure out where they want to go.

“Other investors like revenue,” he says. “I like more data.”

Often, it is difficult for founders to see whether they are on the road to building a 50-million-dollar company or a one-billion-dollar company. “There is a huge difference between a 0-million-revenue company and a 0-billion-revenue company,” says Khosla. “And most of it is in attitude.”

The early days of a startup, before there are any revenues to speak of, often determines what kind of company it will become. “A company becomes the people it hires,” says Khosla. “If you don’t hire people for a billion-dollar company, you are not going to get there.”

Khosla is a big investor in mobile. “Mobile is great for collecting lots of data,” he notes. This is especially true in mobile health, an area where he is seeing an “explosion of activity.” During the Q&A, he pulled out an iPhone with a case that functions as a personal EKG and measured his own heartbeat. The fundamental change in healthcare, he says, is a transfer of “power from health systems and doctors to consumers. We love technology that makes the consumer the CEO of their own health.”

One area that has yet to be transformed by technology is TV. “I am disappointed that no new experience around TV watching has emerged. I am a little surprised. I would have thought something would have popped up.” I think it’s just a matter of time.

Twitter is not just about 140 characters anymore. Ever since it introduced Twitter Cards, it’s been expanding the scope of a Tweet to include photos, videos, music, article extracts, and more. Today Twitter announced three new types of cards to display information about apps, products, and photo galleries, but it also added a couple of key features that will make Twitter a natural distribution platform for mobile apps. Developers will be able to add links at the bottom of their Twitter cards to get people to download their app directly from a mobile app store or deep link into their apps for those who already have them.

These new features are designed to drive app installs and deep linking into mobile apps. From Twitter’s Developer blog

One of the most important features in the new Cards is the ability to allow users to download your app (if the user doesn’t already have it installed), or deep-link into your own app (if the app is already installed on the user’s mobile device)

Forget about the desktop web for a second. This move is Twitter’s way of giving mobile apps a huge bear hug. Mobile apps already rely on Twitter and Facebook to share any photos, videos, articles, or other content found or produced inside those app. The problem is there is no return path to those apps, even for other people who are discovering those shared links (now multimedia cards) on mobile phones.

With download links, every time someone shares something on Twitter via a mobile app that implements these types of cards, all of their followers are just a click away from downloading the app—every time they share something. That is huge. The more people share from a particular app on Twitter, the more that app will be downloaded.

Every single mobile app developer is going to want to add these download links into their Twitter Cards. And if they haven’t implemented Twitter Cards yet, now they are going to have to think hard about why they aren’t jumping into the fray.

It’s not just about downloads. Twitter is taking a stab at one of the big problems with mobile apps: it’s hard to link between them. (Remember, the link structure of the web is what makes it so powerful). With deep linking, people can move seamlessly from their mobile Twitter stream right into the app being linked from. It could be that picture in Path, or that video in Takes.

Twitter’s embrace of mobile apps and its willingness to become a huge distribution platform for them will in turn help spice up the Twitter stream with all sorts of expandable cards. The more that Twitter Cards become the norm inside your stream, the more diverse and visually rich that stream will become. No doubt, advertisers will love that. Twitter is already testing different ad units and direct commerce in cards. Imagine Twitter Cards as ad units where the revenue is shared with the contributing mobile app or publisher. If Twitter gets this right, it could create a very lucrative revenue stream for both itself and the ecosystem of apps that publish into Twitter.

When you take a photo, what you are really trying to do is capture a moment. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you press the shutter a split second too late. So you take another photo, and another one. But the moment is gone, and you wish you had been shooting video for the last 60 seconds instead.

But video is hard. It takes forethought and camera skills, and you rarely get what you want in one shot—which means editing, which means work. It’s just easier to take a photo. And that is what most of us do. Admittedly, I take a fair amount of both—I have 4,094 photos on my phone, and 322 videos—yet my videos still only represent 7 percent of the moments captured on my camera roll.

What if making a good video was as easy as taking photos? That is the basic idea behind Takes, a new iPhone app that just launched today in the App Store. Takes is a new type of camera. You snap photos, and you end up with a tightly edited video. Swipe up and down to add filters. Swipe left and right to change the soundtrack, and you are done. Not only do you end up with a compelling video, you get to keep the photos as well.

Takes is a portfolio company of bMuse, a product studio where I am a partner. I am an adviser to the company, and have been using the app for the past few months. Instead of shooting random video clips on my phone, only to watch them once and abandon them forever in my camera roll, I am now actually making mini-movies I want to show other people. (Here’s one I took of a walk in the woods).  But don’t take my word for it. Download the app, and let us know what you think.

There are countless video apps out there. I’ve tried them all. Some are quite good, but none have become an habitual, go-to app. They require either too much work or produce videos that aren’t particularly inspiring.

Video is a hard problem, much harder than photos. With photos, you add a filter, some cropping, and almost anything looks good. Making good videos is much more complex—it’s all in the editing, the pacing, picking exactly which moments to show.

Takes is unique in that it lives at the intersection of photos and videos. Through its magic sauce, it translates the ease of taking photos into compelling, personal videos that you can share with anyone via Facebook, Twitter, or email.

It just works. Even the music engine cuts the songs dynamically to the length of each video. You never have to think about “making a video” because all you are doing is taking photos. The app groups them together by time. Hit the “Instant” button and your photos are transformed into a video. Or go into the gallery and select your own moments to put together.

But the photos don’t go away. Scrub through the video to see each individual photo. When you share a Take on Facebook or the web, viewers can toggle between the video and a gallery of the underlying photos. The pictures are literally moving.

Are you building a killer mobile product that is going to change the world? Do you want feedback on your pitch from some top VCs and me? In order to find the very best startups and products for DEMO Mobile in April (apply here), I am embarking on a short DEMO Tour next month in partnership with Andreessen Horowitz, Kleiner Perkins, and First Round Capital.

The concept is simple: we will take over a conference room at each VC firm and hear pitches from ten mobile startups. Each startup will then receive feedback on how to make their pitch better from both DEMO and a partner from the hosting VC firm. This is a terrific opportunity to meet some of the smartest investors in tech and strut your stuff in front of them. All meetings will be private and confidential. In addition to the feedback session, select participants will be invited to launch at DEMO Mobile in April.

In order to qualify for the DEMO Tour, you need to be working on a mobile product ready to launch next April. Mobile is defined rather broadly to include not just mobile apps for smartphones and tablets, but also devices, services that take advantage of mobile data, robotics, and new vehicles. Apply below for slots at each stop on the tour.

• DEMO Day at Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Park, CA-December 5, 2012, Apply for a Meeting Today
• DEMO Day at Kleiner Perkins, Silicon Valley, CA – December 6, 2012- Apply for a Meeting Today
• DEMO Day at First Round Capital, New York, NY – December 13, 2012- Apply for a Meeting Today