I prefer to bookend the New Yr vacation with two posts, one trying again on the 12 months that’s ending (What Occurred) and one trying ahead to the 12 months forward (What Will Occur). That is the primary of those two posts. The second will run tomorrow.
I ended my What Will Occur In 2023 with this recommendation:
Buckle up, hold powerful, and be sensible.
What I didn’t predict in that publish, though we had been discussing the chance internally at USV for a number of months on the time I wrote it, was the failure of Silicon Valley Financial institution and a number of other different banks that centered on the startup and web3 sectors.
I really feel like that second, which hit us in March, marked the underside of the downturn, though it has taken no less than the remainder of the 12 months to work via the carnage and there may be nonetheless a bit extra to come back.
That look-forward publish additionally missed the most important new factor in tech, Chat GPT, which had initially launched a few month earlier than I wrote it. That was a giant miss as 2023 will most definitely be remembered because the 12 months that AI went mainstream with shoppers, due to Chat GPT and different shopper interfaces to giant AI fashions.
To some extent, these two issues are associated. The tip of the 2022/2023 tech/startup downturn occurred when two issues got here collectively. The primary is the top of a interval of rising rates of interest that had despatched the inventory market and broader capital markets reeling. The second is the emergence of a brand new tech megatrend, AI, which has been creating in entrance of our very eyes for so long as I’ve been in tech, so that’s over forty years now.
However earlier than one thing can change into mainstream, it takes a shopper interface that enables everybody to see the ability of the expertise firsthand. That factor was Chat GPT and it’ll rightly take its place together with the iPhone, Netscape, the Macintosh, and different shopper merchandise that introduced a brand new expertise into the mainstream and supplied for a wave of expertise innovation that adopted.
After all, a whole lot of different issues occurred in tech, startups, and web3 in 2023, however these two issues are those that matter essentially the most. Markets have settled down and are poised to maneuver larger and we’ve received a brand new megatrend that can drive innovation, investing, and the financial system.
So whereas it was a really tough 12 months, I additionally assume 2023 was an extremely vital 12 months and units us up for an thrilling new interval in tech. Extra on that tomorrow.