What a decade this 12 months has been. Whereas prediction items all the time include a big asterisk as a result of nobody is aware of actually something about what might play out sooner or later — similar to massive shocks to large startup sectors — our views about 2022 have aged … curiously.
Final 12 months, Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm, and Anna Heim spotlighted three different startup theses that may define the coming 12 months. Now, we’re fact-checking how correct these predictions had been, plus what we’d change about our views. We all know. Humble.
For an gentle vacation riff, we’re speaking about what occurred with the M&An area, open supply, and usage-based pricing. Let’s have some enjoyable!
Natasha: Let’s discuss acquisitions
Final 12 months, I predicted that M&A would evolve to incorporate a riskier sort of ambition. I cited Twitter’s hunger for a Slack competitor and Nike’s infatuation with NFT collectibles. I even reminded founders that startups have to “keep disciplined even amid a cash-rich setting” as a substitute of “spinning up lukewarm local weather and web3 methods as a result of that’s what they assume their cap desk desires to listen to.” (And that tradition and expertise are arduous to combine on the identical time).
