Last January, I jumped on the Here Are My Predictions For The Year bandwagon and came up with this set of 8 predictions. Although I was not rigorous enough to attach probabilities to my predictions, you can see that some of my predictions were deliberately bold: in the start-up world, the mantra is, “Go big or go home." You can judge for yourself how well I did.
This year, I suddenly find myself in March not yet having put out a similar list for 2016 even though I’d consistently Evernoted down some thoughts all through 2015. (An anti-prediction: “Evernoted” will never become a colloquialism!) No matter — here we go now. This year’s list is somewhat eclectic and doesn’t focus just on start-ups and venture capital.
As usual, you’ll find a TL;DR version at the bottom.
1. “IoT" is dead, long live IoT.
Just like “on-demand” last year, “big data” a couple of years ago and “daily deals” before that, I think this is the year the term “IoT” will become so widely used as to become meaningless, banal, even uncool. This doesn’t mean that the move towards an Internet of Things will no longer be a truly powerful trend. The trend will, in fact, accelerate. But when anything with a chip in it can be said to belong to the Internet of Things, which could encompass everything from wearables to logistics tracking technologies, home appliances, entertainment gadgets, cars and more, then I argue that the term not only loses its meaning but actually inhibits clarity of thought on how to tackle a given opportunity. (In the same manner, I've heard people declare with a straight face that their little Excel spreadsheet with a few thousand rows of data constitutes Big Data — urgh.)
As “IoT” itself becomes meaningless, what I expect to see is more specific terms within the broader IoT universe gaining currency, reflecting specialisation and maturation of yesterday’s sub-niches.
2. Fintech touching consumers more directly and in more ways
Today, most ordinary consumers don’t know what “fintech” means. In Asia, most don’t even experience fintech directly except occasionally in the area of payments. This will change. Fintech underpins pretty much every aspect of banks’ internal operations as well as many of the ways institutional/corporate clients interact with banks. This year I expect to see the beginnings of fintech directly touching consumers. Untapped opportunities exist in personal financial planning, term insurance, investment execution, credit, security as well as in payments itself. Each of these is a vast area.
3. Rationalisation and specialisation of VC firms in Asia
Even with recent market turmoil, there is plenty of growth capital available to start-ups in Asia from non-VCs. These include wealthy individuals and families, corporations, government agencies, crowd-funding platforms and more. Most of these actors don’t invest for a living and therefore may have lower return thresholds and/or different measures of success from traditional VC firms. This means that VCs who fail to recognise this new reality (where they are not the sole source of capital) will get blown away in negotiations and fail to win deals. Over time, these are the VCs who will end up as has-beens. Other, smarter VCs will focus on building their strengths in specific industry sectors, stages of development or other areas of specialisation, which will help them make a compelling and differentiated case for winning the right to invest in companies.
Note that phrase: "the right to invest". This has not historically been the way capitalists in Asia have thought.
To be clear, I expect this to be a multi-year trend, not just in 2016: the venture capital business has very long lead times and poorer performing firms don't die overnight, instead fading away over several years.
4. Privacy and personal control renaissance
The proliferation of smartphones and Facebook’s continued insinuation of itself into every aspects of many people’s private lives will, I hope, finally have the effect of provoking a substantial backlash and precipitating a move towards greater personal control for users over their data, phone features, notifications, etc. (I call out Facebook because they are the biggest culprit but they are by no means the sole culprit in this regard; LinkedIn may be worse and several others deserve blame too.)
I think there will continue to be a number of people for whom privacy does not matter, but I think others will demand and gravitate towards services that respect users’ desire for full control over their own information and devices. How could this come about? At multiple levels of abstraction, ranging from changes to mobile operating systems — I hope my next phone will allow me to set app permissions at a much more granular level instead of presenting me with a take-it-leave-it "choice" when I install a new app — through to businesses built around VRM-like principles, and government regulation and standards-body frameworks concerning what’s permissible.
5. Push back against always-on towards rediscovering mindfulness and focus
This is a strange suggestion for me to be making given that I’m writing primarily about tech. I think this is the year that many of the earliest adopters of tech will say, “Enough.” I see this in my own habits — and I've been online since the early 90s — but this isn’t (purely) a self-reflective prediction. It also comes from my observation of the behaviour and expressed desires of hipsters (I know, I know…), very busy and tech-savvy people, and other early adopters of new trends.
Ok, so that may strike you as anecdotal — but take a look at how often people have searched for the term "mindfulness" on Google. As a comparison, you can add other terms like “stress” or “meditation” that you might reasonably expect to be correlated with mindfulness. The growth in searches for "mindfulness" has been much greater (off a smaller base) than these other terms.
The implication? Perhaps users choosing not to use apps that incorporate infinite scroll and create a state of permanent distraction. Or more single-button apps, i.e., press a button, get what you want, move on. More prominence given to Do-Not-Disturb modes. More services, apps and OS features that actually help with focus and productivity rather than always-on and interruptions.
All of these will change the way we work, play, learn and live.
TL;DR
1. “IoT" is dead, long live IoT.
2. Fintech touching consumers more directly and in more ways
3. Rationalisation and specialisation of VC firms in Asia
4. Privacy and personal control renaissance
5. Push back against always-on towards rediscovering mindfulness and focus
6. “Evernoted” will never become a colloquialism ;-)
