Several years ago, before Gilt, One King's Lane and Zulily, I argued that some of the most valuable, disruptive tech startups would be in commerce , not advertising, cutting out the middle man rather than adding another one . It's fair to say that 2010's fastest-growing technology companies have largely been examples of this trend . Now there's a second trend emerging in 2011 that seems at least as important: the hybrid business, with one foot in the virtual world and one foot in the real world. This isn't the old "clicks-and-mortar" concept from the 1990s , which put web glitter on an old-school business, building Walmart.com for Walmart. A hybrid business is built entirely from scratch, to be innovative in its online technology and its real-world operations.