The Chipolte “Back to the Start” ad makes me stop and think.  My first reaction was…that was “weebles-like” cute cartoon. And their strategy of ”food with integrity” is definitely working.  It’s catching the consumer’s concern over where their food come from and wanting fresher “fast food.”  In 2011, same store sales were up 11.2%; net income was up 20%.

Yet how do we wrestle with the fact that we can’t feed everyone on this planet using back to the farm methods?  I was acutely aware of this fact on a trip to Ethiopia last year.  ”Sustainably” cultivated food may be another privilege only for the wealthy in the world.  We do need some very efficient processes.  I hope we can find more humane and sustainable processes that can feed us all.

Resolutions.  These are tough for me.  I like all things new… the latest thinking, the latest trends, news.  I’m great at discipline but I like to start things “anew” and may not commit to somethings long enough.  But I had three ‘ah-has’ over the New Year’s weekend.

1)  Dabbling:  A friend and I discussed our fitness goals.  She gave me some straight feedback.  ”You think of yourself as an athlete.  But I see you as a dabbler.”  And she was right.  I hadn’t committed to anything with fitness. I was just dabbling, starting and stopping.

2)  The value of a goal: I heard on New Year’s Eve the answer to my question:  Why set a goal anyway?  ”Because it acts as a magnet.  It draws you to it.  You have the ability to see it over the temptation or roadblock in your way.”

3)  The will to do the work to win: My son Peter has an Ultimate Frisbee teammate who had battled cancer early in his college years.  This kid is one of the best athletes in the country and an incredibly impressive young man.  While he rarely talks about his cancer, he did tell Peter:  ”I learned from a coach early in life that it’s easy to have the will to win – everyone has that.  But do you have the will to do the work to win?

My goals are still forming but one fitness goal is set.  These new learnings are already coming into play…stop dabbling, go toward the magnet, do the work to win.

Look at these statistics from Starbucks mobile effort, provided by Mashable!

• Since launching a mobile app that allows mobile payments this past year, Starbucks has hosted 26 million transactions on  iOS, BlackBerry and Android.  There have been millions of downloads of the app.  One in four Starbucks card transactions is now executed via a Starbucks card and a portion of those are done through mobile.
• The app’s momentum is building.  There have been 6 million transactions last nine weeks.  The highest level of transactions are in large urban areas.
• $110 million has been reloaded to customers’ Starbucks cards via mobile compared with $2.4 billion loaded into Starbucks cards overall in 2011.  Mobile is nearly 5% of cards’ revenue in less than a year.  Now that’s a solid new revenue stream.  (Of course, we don’t know how much is incremental.  I’ll keep looking for that stat.)

Consumers as usual love the improved convenience – it’s a faster and easier way to pay.   You can just see the pipeline of new products and services coming from the mobile platform from Starbucks.  What’s possible for your business?

Mary Meeker* highlights these trends in her annual presentation at Web 2.0 yesterday (review in techcrunch).  Here are my favorite points with my (humble) comments are:

Globality – We Aren’t In Kansas Anymore… 81% of users of the top ten global internet properties are OUSA.  Julie:  I see it everyday with global visitors to the US websites, even my local church website.

Mobile – in the Early Innings Growth,  but the world has not seen tech adoption like smartphones and iPads. Julie: Her graphic above of needs is not that far off.

User Interface – Text/Graphical/Touch/Sound/Move – “Sound is going to be bigger than video.” SoundCloud CEO.  Julie: Add “role of sound” to the creative brief.

Commerce – Fast/Easy/Fun/Savings = More Important Than Ever… “It’s now an expectation that if you see it on your screen, you can click and buy it,” says Meeker.  Julie: Ecommerce everywhere.

Advertising – Lookin’ Good…23% of clicks on ads is a good sign.  Julie: the growth in e-retailing is so much faster than offline.  Some categories just experiencing this phenomenon.

Content Creation – Changed Forever: Meeker refers to Joanne Bradford from DemandMedia doing a better job at talking about content creation.  Julie: note to self, read more of Joanne Bradford.

Mega-Trend of 21st Century = Empowerment of People via Connected Mobile Devices “The ability to get realtime fast and broad information flow is only going to get greater,” says Meeker.  Julie: even more community building is coming.

Authentic Identity – The Good/Bad/Ugly. But Mostly Good? Julie: On the downside, “‘truth’ is one photo/click/send away” (Meeker).  On the positive, just be yourself!

Thank you Mary and techcrunch for sharing your learning.  I’m off to learn more about Joanne Bradford.  Let me know what you think about these trends!

Julie

*Mary is a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.