2023 - The Year of the Crow
While we may recognize crows as the symbols of doom or the bottom feeders on the rodents we run over, crows are resourceful and crafty. Increasingly, scientists find that crows and their relatives have exceptional birdbrains, proving extraordinarily adept at crafting twigs, leaves and even their own feathers into tools. Researchers have even discovered that crows might learn to drop stones in pitchers to raise the height of water inside, just like in Aesop's fable.
2023 is the year that the crafty and resourceful are the winners and here goes my predictions (some wackier than others) as to the specifics of the crows in all of us.
More with Less will remain the narrative in the business community. After Twitter has shown that you can iterate product, ship and move with 1/4 of your staff, many business leaders will follow suit and the first half of the year will see more RIFs and right sizing for bloated companies. #WartimeCEOs will trend on Twitter as leading through tough times will become one of the most in-vogue and well respected things.
Cash buyers will eat the real estate market. With financing costs rising dramatically YoY, cash buyers in all asset classes will thrive. Whether it’s homeowners that stretched on home purchases in 2020 - 2022 or commercial office building owners who went for the Class B suburban value-add deal with 65% LTV and significant lease up risk, I would expect we’ll hear about a few cash piles forming to help over-stretched sellers get out at moderate to steep discounts. Concretely I think median home values will decrease by 8% in 2023.
Canada will be a hot bed of commodity activity and narrative in 2023. Considering the sizable land masses and natural resource deposits that exist in Canadian territories there will be a heated debate about the exploratory and exploitation of those resources from neighboring countries. For better or worse, we’re in a commodities arms race and Canada remains relatively passive in the discussion. This year the discourse will heat up as a country with huge resources but only a little population will be front and center in a global debate.
We will see the acquisition of a main stream media empire by a large technology company. Similar to how we saw Bezos acquire the Washington Post, we will see a large, well capitalized technology company acquire a main stream media outlet in an attempt to own the editorial output. My outlandish bet is that Apple makes a bid to acquire Fox.
Web3 is in a world of pain in the year ahead. I think we’ll see the colossal collapse of at least two other stable coins and the days of esoteric altcoins will meet it’s fierce regulatory match. Concurrently, I think we’ll learn about a brilliant real world, highly useful use case for record keeping running on the Solana blockchain.
EV adoption will continue to ratchet up as many of the automakers are ramping production for customer deliveries and I think by Q3’23 we will see EV’s account for over 12% of new car sales
Education Technology will have a big year as many parents grow frustrated by the expensive cost and low value of education for their children. Coupled with the digitally native nature of Gen Z and the release of ChatGPT, we will see a breakthrough educational platform that will garner huge venture capital targeted at parents looking for a valid alternative to formal schooling.
San Francisco’s comeback year. What goes down must come back up, right? After three years of anti-SF rhetoric, poor policies and a high cost of living, San Francisco will rise from the ashes as a talent magnet. A mix of return to the office, “let’s get back to building” mentality or people waking back up to the sheer beauty of California - the twitter trope will move back to SF as a place to migrate towards for innovation, an eccentric lifestyle and a correction from the “it’s cool to hate on SF narrative.”
Twitter will thrive in 2023. As Musk chided, “I love when people talk poorly about twitter, on twitter.” As the old adage goes, even bad PR is better than no PR. The truth is, people need a place for discourse and Twitter is the answer via last man standing. Facebook is too busy, Instagram is a highlight reel, TikTok is your entertainer, LinkedIn is your business but Twitter is your thoughts. That’s not going away and it’s not getting replaced by a Clubhouse, a Mastodon, a Truth Social or anything remotely new. By the end of 2023, Twitter’s usage rates will skyrocket, Twitter will be viewed in a positive light, and it will be re-built in such a way that your twitter profile will be the most accurate and raw reflection of who you really are - call it Metaverse or what have you but your identity will be what you reflect on Twitter.
US based manufacturing here in America will amplify and working in a “factory” or a new-age production facility will go from a lower-class job to a more desirable occupation. We’ll see the continued trend of anti-globalization and the roping off of sovereign interests and thus the importance of self-reliance. As the US dollar loses value globally (after a strong run up the last few years), our purchasing power globally will decline and thus our desire to build and buy domestically will be stronger.
While these predictions are all over the place and run across no focused industry or theme, it all follows a similar pattern: 2023 will reverse the misconceptions and mishaps of our recent past and focus us again on building a society that is sustainable and valued appropriately. Cheers to all you crows out there; hope you’ve got some stones ready.