Starting Monday night, we will be hosting our Fourth Annual ThinkTomorrow~Today Conference in Half Moon Bay. ThinkTomorrow~Today brings over 500 leading venture capitalist, private companies and industry gurus together to discuss what the future might look like and where the big ideas are going to be found.

Over the three days, we will have 80 private companies presenting and panels on subjects as diverse as: how to invest in China, the future of mobile computing, and how the flat world is creating opportunities in the online education market. Keynotes include: Tony Perkins sharing perspective on what's hot; Ron Conway interviewing Marc Andreessen on Ning.com and the internet's future; "Coach of the Valley" Bill Campbell having a fireside chat with Jonathan Rosenberg on how innovation happens at Google (NASDAQ: GOOG, $573.20), and also the Coach will be having a discussion with John Doerr on investing in Green Technology and how the Babe Ruth of venture capital thinks about where he's going to have the opportunity to hit home runs. Additionally, we will have a screening of the documentary "Two Million Minutes" which shows how American kids are competing against their counterparts around the world - eye opening stuff.

At the end of the day, the conference is really about what the entrepreneurs and founders are excited about as it's the power of these people and their ideas that fuel innovation and tomorrow's great companies. Entrepreneurs who are so passionate about their vision and confidence of success that they are willing to bet it all on red against all odds, maxing out the credit cards and borrowing against the children's education fund. With all the sacrifice and risk involved with starting a company, you have to be a little bit crazy but it's these people that make things happen, and we love them for that.

Richard Branson, who dropped out of school at age 15 frustrated by undetected dyslexia, was rejected by over 50 banks before he got the loan to start his mail order business; today, his Virgin empire has over $25 billion in revenue. Jeff Bezos drove across the country knowing only he wanted to start a business involved with the internet, despite all the cynics he has built Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN, $72.41) into to the largest internet retailer in the world. Steve Jobs started Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL, $183.45) with Steve Wozniak after dropping out of Reed College with the vision of creating an "insanely great computer." After being fired from the company he founded, he returned in 1996 and Apples stock has appreciated 50% per year since. Michael Bloomberg, after being fired by Salomon Brothers founded the media company that bares his name and today, has built it into one of the most respected and most valuable multi-media businesses in the world.

The hunt for tomorrow's stars begins with the entrepreneur and the idea but we then set our sites on the Megatrends that impact the growth industries we care about.

The largest market growth opportunities are those created on the frontiers of the economy, where change at the edge leads to wide-scale change within the economy. A core element of my strategy in successfully identifying emerging growth opportunities is to understand the Megatrends that drive change, productivity and ultimately growth, throughout the economy.

We see Megatrends as the fundamental catalysts for growing markets, through their influence on consumer behavior, business processes and by serving as building blocks for the introduction of new products and services. Additionally, by influencing price and quality improvements, Megatrends unlock latent demand and reinvigorate growth in mature markets, while freeing resources to finance the growth of new market opportunities.

Megatrends effectively create a tailwind at the back of emerging industries. The tailwinds help accelerate the opportunity and provide the fundamentals to grow at a high rate for a long time.

Great growth opportunities are often found where Megatrends intersect the growth sectors of the economy - technology, healthcare, alternative/green energy, media and education, and business and consumer services.

Some of the current Megatrends affecting consumers, businesses and entire economies for that matter are Knowledge Economy, Globalization, The Internet, Consolidation, Branding, Demographics, Outsourcing, Green Living and Convergence.

Below are the key Megatrends that I believe will drive sales and profits for the long-run:

Knowledge Economy - American society has been shifting from an industrial-based economy since World War II to a service-based economy in which the educated are kings;

Globalization - Interdependence between countries is increasing with improvements in communications, technology and transportation;

The Internet - Media, commerce, education, social life, work and leisure move to interconnected computers from traditional forms;

Consolidation - Mom and Pop shops are disappearing into memories as conglomerates eat up market share;

Branding - Creating memorable slogans and logos as well as a consistent reputation is increasingly important in order to differentiate products in a global economy;

Green - With increasing oil prices, scarce oil reserves and enhanced global warming, businesses and the society are switching to Green energy and Green Living; Demographics - Changes in the age, race, educational level, employment status, and economic standards of living create predictable markets;

Outsourcing - As the cost of employing American citizens becomes increasingly expensive relative to the rest of the world, U.S. employers look abroad;

Convergence - Physics, Biology and Chemistry are merging into one science while phones, TVs, Radios and Computers are merging into one;

In the long-run we believe these are dynamic forces that will drive sales and profits of entire industries, some directly and others indirectly, while companies focused on becoming industry leaders will capture the largest share of these rapidly growing markets and ultimately create tremendous shareholder value.

In essence, Megatrends are powerful technological, economic and social forces that develop from a groundswell (early adoption), move into the mainstream (mass market) and disrupt the status quo (mature markets), driving change, productivity and ultimately growth opportunities for companies, industries and entire economies.

Megatrends play a key role in how social, economic, technological and political changes take hold, and as we look backward through history, their effects are easily seen. In real-time however, Megatrends tend to go underappreciated. The nature of Megatrends is that they are relatively slow to develop, driven by bottoms-up, "local" events, that slowly gain in critical mass until they come to define large-scale and pervasive change.

In 1982, John Naisbitt identified several trends that were in various stages of restructuring an industrial economy, which was regionally concentrated, national in focus, with corporate America best characterized by industrial giants with extensive management hierarchies. Technological improvements were often feared, particularly by workers and unions. Politically, power remained concentrated, with business, labor and social issues being polarizing, and resolutions focused on short-term solutions.

In the midst of this restructuring, which the consensus had yet to appreciate and fewer still wanted to embrace, Naisbitt anticipated what most feared: the continued decline of manufacturing and the rise of the information economy.

The trends identified more than 20 years ago have steadily progressed, with many information technology companies as recognizable and mature today as industrial bellwethers were then. Aside from identifying the trends themselves, one of the key insights was that the most powerful of the trends occurred independently, across geographies and throughout communities, only later becoming a large collective trend.

What Naisbitt was able to call out from these seemingly disparate trends, were common factors, or Megatrends, that were in effect catalyzing the restructuring of past, present and the probable future.

Megatrends continue to play just as important a role today as they have over the past 10, 20 and 50 years. What is changing are the smaller but related trends resulting from today's more visible Megatrends. For example, while globalization is clearly not a new trend, in combination with greater geopolitical openness, economic development and more robust information and communications technologies, the pace of globalization, trade and outsourcing has rapidly accelerated.

Likewise, with the explosion in the number of products and services to address a growing number of global markets, the value of "brands" is growing exponentially, as companies find it a necessity to differentiate their products and defend their markets with the value embedded behind their brands.

Information technologies have been around long enough for IT companies to now be mature, although the application of IT continues to rapidly broaden beyond traditional business investments and consumer electronics, spurring growth in new areas of biotechnology, nanotechnology as well as consumer and business services.

Identifying new trends is always difficult, and as the venture capital community notes, by the time something becomes a trend, it is too late for many investors to reap benefits. That said, only by continuing to look for the forces that shape the realm of businesses and consumers, can we hope to understand and capitalize on emerging growth markets in today's global economy.

Within these Megatrends are themes that become increasingly pervasive through economies, though generally remain unrecognized until they are firmly considered the status quo. Below we have augmented the themes first posited by Naisbitt, and which represent recurring themes across the current economic and social Megatrends currently at work.

I have identified some Megatrends that I feel are the key drivers for waves of opportunity.: The Knowledge Economy, Demographics, Globalization, the Internet, Green Living, and Outsourcing, will drive market growth and competition, while Convergence, Clusters and Brands, will be the key enablers of what become successful products, technologies, companies and industries.

Those companies best able to recognize and harness the growth opportunities made available by these Megatrends, will be those that first capitalize on, then extend their lead from the competition; recognizing the rewards of being an early-mover, leverage productivity improvements for the benefit of their customers and their own growth potential.

In the coming years, these Megatrends, as well as many new ones, will continue to create the largest market opportunities, providing the fundamental catalysts to growing markets, through their influence on consumer behavior, business processes and serving as the building blocks for the introduction of new products and services, as well as creating growth opportunities within more mature markets.

My view of current and future trends is that they likely will be extensions of past Megatrends, though the pace of change will be more accelerated; rapidly capitalizing on cumulative advancements in technology, demographic shifts, changing consumer preferences and improved business efficiencies. The time it takes to innovate and commercialize to meet current and latent demand will continue to collapse toward real-time.

In my mission to find the stars of tomorrow, I rely heavily on understanding the Megatrends that are creating significant market growth opportunities. In the years ahead, I anticipate that the dynamic changes that have taken place during the last bull market will serve as stepping stones for future growth opportunities.

Last week, stocks took a pause with the excuses being many but led by $125 oil prices, followed by AIG's (NYSE: AIG, $40.28) mind numbing $7.8 billion first quarter loss and data showing the U.S. consumer is taking out more debt to cope with the sluggish economy. For the week, the Dow was down 2.4%, the S&P 500 was down 1.8% and NASDAQ was off 1.3%. Encouraging to us was that many of the leading stocks had a good week despite the market being mainly down. Strong stock performance came from Mindray Medical, up 10.5%, Priceline.com, up 9.7%, Mercado Libre, up 8.1%, and Lululemon, up 7.4%.

We remain bullish for growth equities as fundamentals, valuations and sentiment are all in the bull's favor.