Andreessen Horowitz partners lay out 2023 tech predictions
Rather than dwell on the bleakness of this past year, several partners at Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (AH) chose to spotlight a plethora of big tech ideas that they believe could shape 2023.
In a recent article, more than forty partners across the blue-chip firm shared ideas running the whole gamut of technology, from social platform marketing to modular nuclear reactors and everything in between.
Many of the stated pursuits were revolutionary, and some of them are already at a nascent stage and only need a little fine-tuning to become everyday applications. Below, we’ll look at a few ideas various members of the a16z team shared for 2023.
AI to be more mainstream?
Connie Chan, a general partner at AH, believed that 2023 would finally unlock the full marketing potential of social platforms, turning everyone with an account into a seller. We’ve already seen aspects of this, with websites like YouTube becoming better avenues for product discovery and teaching consumers about the value proposition of products.
Another partner, Bryan Kim, claimed that adopting artificial intelligence (AI) would become more mainstream. According to him, 2023 will be the year AI developers leverage behavior and psychology to create products for everyday consumers.
Kim’s sentiment tied in with his counterpart Anne Lee Skates’ assertion that 2023 will fully unlock the so-called “third place,” a digital gathering place where people can work, play, and interact. In Skates’ opinion, adequate technology, including generative AI, can help create deeper and more meaningful digital experiences and relationships in the coming year.
Breakthroughs in bio health
Vineeta Agarwala and Becky Pferdehirt, both AH’s bio health team members, hoped that 2023 would be the year the world saw a breakthrough in precision medicine delivery. According to them, the last few years have seen great strides in therapeutic modalities, including correcting faulty genes and curing inherited diseases.
However, delivering these medical utilities exactly where they are needed in the human body has not been as safe and efficient as many hoped. Agarwala and Pferdehirt believe startups in this field are primed to use big data and computational prediction to improve medicine delivery into the body and unleash a cascade of therapeutic approaches.
Technology to help overcome regulatory challenges
Angela Strange and Joe Schmidt, members of AH’s fintech team, touched on an issue that has long plagued the crypto and DeFi spaces: regulations.
In their assessment, regulatory requirements are complex and varied, and many financial services companies risk non-compliance. However, they believe startups leveraging technology to help TradFi and Defi companies overcome regulatory challenges could become more prominent in 2023.
Another partner, Seema Amble, believes that identity verification and onboarding services such as “know your customer” (KYC) and “know your business” (KYB) will mature and overcome the many challenges they’ve faced in the last couple of years. According to Amble, these services will start incorporating more proprietary analytics and identifiers to provide more comprehensive coverage.
David Haber, for his part, posited that there will be a shift towards innovating the back-end office functions of financial services businesses. According to him, there’s going to be a renewed focus on managing the financial health of companies, resulting in the proliferation of new tools and services for cash management and equity efficiency, among others.
