Every few years an article comes out by a big investor that predicts what startup trends and industries will be disrupted over the next 10 years. In an industry where you have to be optimistic about everything, I’ve never seen someone predict the complete opposite.
Technology is pretty magical but you can’t just slap it on anything and make it better.
These are mostly people problems. Unsolved ones.
What will technology definitely not change in the next decade?
Everyone will still hate dating apps and say they are broken
That’s not to say they won’t be the most popular way people date and meet their spouse.
They most likely will. But dating itself won’t be enjoyable. The most toxic people will always be the power users for dating apps. There won’t be any spontaneity and all genders will feel like another number.
Meeting in bars and physical places will continue to become less popular. The social skills of people coming out of a pandemic will only contribute to this.
Everyone will still hate hiring apps and say they are broken
Similarly, applying for jobs online will be how most jobs happen but everyone will still hate it.
It will be tedious and a continual grind and the interviews will get worse.
The happy people will be those who built up enough of a network to skip this part of the process.
Productivity apps will continue to not do anything for your productivity
There will continue to be startups that claim they can help you be productive and none of them will work.
They will show you a lot of nice studies and graphs on why their product should work though. It will be very convincing.
The productivity startups will fall under 3 categories:
Homeopathy
Some startups will claim productivity benefits from a change in diet. They may recommend unregulated supplements and large amounts of exotic sounding spices to clear your head. This will potentially help those who have a poor diet and underlying autoimmune diseases. Before water was sanitary, beer was also considered a cure.
Borderline Cult
Others will continue to form almost religions. They will be complete with mantras, iconography, and meditation.
Paid Vague Advice
Many of the posts in this blog are like this category.
Vague life will continue to exist. General life advice on how to be happy will be mixed into this advice for some reason.
Unfortunately, many companies will tout this advice as the secrets to success and charge people for access to it.
Fitness apps will not help people stay fit
Some will help people get fit initially, but not stay fit over the long term.
They may succeed in getting people to exercise more and at least enjoy the exercise.
There will also continue to be misleading and conflicting information on what exactly help someone get fit. People will still debate if they should be eating 0% fat yogurt. And most will pay for things you do not use like gym memberships.
Personal robots will be used on a daily basis in exactly 0 homes
Big companies will continue to put a lot of money into personal robots and they won’t be used anywhere or by anyone.
They will have big advertisements with robots that look like the maid from the Jetsons.
People like screens and hate moving parts. They will watch Netflix for 8 hours straight on an SSD drive because even having a hard drive with moving parts is too unpopular.
Investors will continue to complain about increasing startup valuations
A startup is either worth a 10s of billions or nothing in the eyes of a Venture Capitalist. Nobody cares if they can get in at a company with a 100 million cap vs a company with a 2 million cap when the outcome is so much higher.
Y Combinator has had both of these valuations at their demo days.
There is a limit, but we have not seen it yet.
No one will be able to coherently explain a blockchain technology that is both legal and practically better than existing technology.
Other than the amount of money and marketing they can get from it being web3.
Crypto will likely continue to grow though and unexpected things will keep coming out of it. NFTs are being used like a Kickstarter for event companies.