Forecasting is a professional hazard in venture. We stare at an undeniable trend, draw a straight line, then confidently build a business on top of it.

And sometimes the straight line is real… but your business still gets kneecapped by a deeper trend hiding underneath.

Two examples from my own recent life:

1) The “slam dunk” bet that wasn’t: cell phone loss insurance

If you were sitting in 1995 watching cellphones go mainstream, the obvious overlay business was cell phone insurance—especially loss. More phones → more losses → bigger market. Easy.

Except that’s not what happened.

As phones became more essential, we started treating them like a vital organ.

The adoption curve was real. Cell phone penetration in the U.S. went from 12% in 1995 to 69% in 2005 and eventually 100% by 2020 (source).

The mistake wasn’t misreading adoption—it was assuming human behavior would stay constant as importance exploded.

“Everyone has a phone” doesn’t mean “everyone loses a phone.”

Usage intensity changed behavior. Americans now check their phones 100+ times per day. You don’t casually lose something you touch a hundred times daily. Loss became rarer than 1990s intuition suggested, and insurance demand shifted toward damage and theft—not “oops, left it in a taxi.”

Today, only about one-third of U.S. smartphone owners buy insurance at all.

Penetration created a market—but behavior capped it.

2) The travel adapter that died quietly

I just traveled internationally, realized mid-flight I’d forgotten my plug adapter, and braced for the usual airport-gift-shop penance.

And then… nothing. I never needed one.

The obvious bet was straightforward: more global travel plus more electronics should mean more travel adapters.

The miss was assuming the accessory would survive the standardization.

USB-C won. Standardization crept upward—from devices, to chargers, to outlets themselves—and quietly made the adapter irrelevant. Every hotel room had a USB-C port in the wall. The category didn’t stall. It got erased.

In the phone insurance example, importance changed behavior. Here, standardization deleted the middleman.

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The investing lesson: bet on what’s underneath, not what sits on top

When a trend looks obvious, your job isn’t to cheer. It’s to ask:

“What adjacent trend might make the obvious overlay unnecessary?”

Penetration creates opportunity—until importance changes behavior, or standardization removes the need entirely.

The future is rarely a straight line.
It’s a straight line—until the ground shifts and the overlay disappears.