Well that was one hell of a year.
As I do each December, it’s time to grade my own homework. And the past twelve months certainly started out well. But unless a certain fascistic presidential candidate has a change of heart in the next few days (he won’t), I’m afraid I didn’t break .500 this year (last year I was smokin’ hot, I must say).
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My first two long form prediction posts focused on big topics – artificial intelligence and digital advertising. This one, my last, will focus on a grab bag of market-related topics that have dominated the headlines at one time or another over the past few years.
Let’s start with crypto. It’s hard to fathom how poorly the crypto market has had it these past twelve months, unless, like me, you were a participant in the Great Crypto Winter of 2018. During that downturn, crypto dropped as much as 90 percent – which means there’s plenty of “down” left in today’s already decimated markets. But what I find most interesting about crypto is how much of it is dominated by a day-trader’s sensibility. How much money did we make today? This week? This year? That thesis of crypto – that it’s all about money – was never what drove my interest in the space. Yes, I bought crypto, and yes on paper I made money – and lost more! But the point was always crypto’s thesis of decentralization, of new approaches to governance, and in particular – for me – new ways of architecting data flows in society. Those ideas have been gaining traction all year long, and I don’t see them losing steam in 2023.
Then again, the price of ETH and BTC have become leading indicators of the sector’s overall health, and it’s disingenuous to pretend they don’t matter as it relates to whether more substantive investments are made in projects that truly unlock crypto’s potential. A down market may be the best time to invest, but down markets usually mean far less investment. And I don’t see crypto coming out of this down market over the next year. In fact, I predict that while there may be some significant swings one way or another, by the end of 2023, we’ll have essentially seen a push in the price of major crypto currencies. Is that a good thing? I think it is – the sector needs to find its floor, and start building from there once again. Everyone got well over their skis in ’21-’22 – and many lost their way entirely. It’s time to find our way back.
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Twelve years of making predictions doesn’t make writing them any easier, regardless of my relatively good showing in 2015. In fact, I briefly considered taking the year off – who am I to make predictions anyway? And so much has changed in the past few years – for me personally, and certainly for the industries to which I pay the most attention. But the rigor of thinking about the year ahead is addictive – it provides a framework for my writing, and a snapshot of what I find fascinating and noteworthy. And given that more than 125,000 of you read my post summarizing how I did in 2015 (thanks Medium and LinkedIn!), it was really you who’ve encouraged me to have at it again for 2016. I hope you’ll find these thought provoking, at the very least, and worthy of comment or debate, should you be so inclined.
So let’s get to it.
This is the first in what I hope will become a regular series of posts on new kinds of companies the NewCo team has discovered in our travels to NewCo cities around the world. First up is Tesloop, which I noticed while perusing the schedule for NewCo LA last month. I was already planning on seeing Hyperloop Technologies, another Elon Musk-inspired transportation company, but until NewCo LA’s lineup came out, I had no idea Tesloop even existed.
Read MoreNext up is Silicon Valley, which goes off Oct. 21 – 23, centered on the axis of Palo Alto. This year’s Silicon Valley festival is a pilot – Silicon Valley is more of an idea than an actual *place* per se – and NewCo tends to thrive in city centers. But we’ve found a great partner this year in the city of Palo Alto, which really is as close to the beating heart of the Valley as any city in the south Bay. After all, it’s where Google, Facebook, and hundreds of other game-changing companies started. So this year we’re piloting NewCo Silicon Valley in two parts – first with visits to a small number of legendary Valley company campuses, and second, with a full day of 30 or so companies based in downtown Palo Alto. Here are the companies I plan to visit this year, and why, along with my “runners up” – companies I wish I could also visit, were there two of me.
Day One – October 21
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