What “A16Z’s Big Ideas in tech for 2023”​ list excites and misses!

A16Z has put out their list of Big Ideas for 2023 that they see progress being made on. It’s 29 pages long, and there is a lot of good stuff in it, at least the ideas that a16z thinks it can make money off. However, I also think there are some holes and some questions about the list, which I will try to cover below to advance the conversation.

The list does not do justice to some big industries, except just lumping them under “The Industrial Economy Goes Digital”, as if these are not important as much as Web3. I have no idea why not.

Mobility — Passenger Vehicles, Connected Vehicles, Autonomous, Repair

Real Estate — commercial or residential

Insurance — Home, Vehicle, Life

Home Improvement — expensive, opaque and variable quality

Sustainable Food & supply chains to feed everyone

College Education

This also might indicate that a16z is not focused on these sectors. The list also indicates what a16z is going to invest in 2023, kind of gives you their thesis. For one thing, it is a very long list, which is good for entrepreneurs.

Here is the Link to the original post from A16Z — https://a16z.com/2022/12/15/big-ideas-in-tech-2023/. If you go through the list first, you perhaps would appreciate my thoughts better.

Now let’s look at the idea on which I have some questions, suggestions or comments.

Breakthroughs in Buying

This category covers Social commerce, discovery commerce, video commerce.

• Which of the existing players would make moves into this category?
• What part would Amazon play in it? Amazon has more than 150M members in the US and is dominant in online shopping. Would we see Amazon build video commerce into its platform?
• Meta is focused on Metaverse, but not on social or video commerce. Google doesn’t have any commerce platform.
• What would a new platform look like? A platform that allows one to have their own store, and let the seller do video selling / events as well? Is Shopify better suited for that?
• I can see likes of https://gumstack.com/ already powering video commerce and could play a big part there.
• India clearly is a good market for video commerce, partly because of smartphone adoption and partly because of transportation mess.

Labor Marketplaces Become Specialized

• I think that is really required and someone should do it. Today’s marketplaces are general, and in the process they do not help with any work as such other than being annoying leadgen businesses.
• A platform for a given niche for seniors — Accounting, Tax Help, Mortgage Help, Credit Repair, Tutoring, data cleaning, knowledge summarization etc, the list is endless.
• Plumbers, Roofers. I do not think Angi’s is that today. It should be something that would tell you real time availability of the service provider and really lets you find the right person.
• Won’t you want a really clean and highly vetted marketplace for plumbers or home fixers? I do not think we have any real ones still.

Mainstream AI Adoption: More “Fun” Than You Think

• AI in the games / AI games? It’s already happening and will continue to happen.
• AI is what makes Metaverse work.
• I would be more excited to see the use of AI to make kids’ education interactive, gamified and fun.

Unlocking the “Third Place”

Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third place,” places that host “regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings” outside of home or work.

• Is there any real “Third Place” today? Aren’t there multiple “Third Places”, more akin to gig-economy work(s).?
• Would Twitter be one of those places for political gatherings?
• I hang out on Zoom calls, but they are not really the same as meeting in person. However, aren’t they really a danger to humanity’s need for connection with others and with nature? Shouldn’t the third place actually be out there in nature — on the mountains, on the beaches, on the trails?

Tech Reveals New Sources of Inventory

There’s an enormous opportunity to build the “pipes” that connect sellers with this inventory. Bonus points if you allow consumers to score discounts or access inventory that they wouldn’t normally be able to get their hands on.

• There certainly is a lot of opportunity in this space, building pipes to connect sellers to inventory sources.
• For example, returned items are a big problem as are the unsold items that never leave the factory. Imagine returned items not returned to the seller, but to a different platform, that then figures out how to either resell, recycle or export to other parts of the world.
• A factory direct marketplace platform might work, if the packaging and shipping are much more distributed, at least within certain geographies.

Craigslist, Dismembered and Reinvented

• Craigslist to me is still not dead, but certainly I use it less and less every year. I hear sometimes in my family that Facebook Marketplace is used rather than Craigslist, but it’s like an afterthought.
• Only issue is that Craigslist is free / very cheap and any new marketplace is usually expensive, partly because of a lot of money that is poured into such marketplaces for customer acquisition. I can sell anything small (micro transactions in cash) on Craigslist but can never do so anywhere else.

B2C Gets B2B Distribution

• With more B2B channels used for customer acquisition, does it make any dent into Google and Facebook Ad revenue? Does it impact their valuation at all?
• Would we see Ads for relevant products show up on Slack, Google Meet? I would be OK having a 30 seconds Ad for every 15 mins of extra free Google Meet time.
• What else would go behind platforms like ADP, Banks etc?

The Biggest Company in the World

The biggest company in the world will be a consumer health tech company.

• Consumer healthcare being the biggest company in the world feels something is wrong with human health.
• I would want a “Consumer Wellness” company to be the biggest in the world.
• Also I am not looking forward to Visa of Healthcare, and am kind of ok with Amazon of Healthcare but I look forward to something that is a cross between Apple and Google, with Apple’s product experience and Google’s AI/ML.

The Value-Based Care Stack

“..many “value-based” models haven’t delivered value yet”

• As long as care includes “Wellness”, it certainly is something I look forward to.
• If the value-based care stack does not address the unbearable cost of healthcare, it would not solve any problem, especially with the US getting older and care becoming expensive.
• Let’s just start with “Wellness” being taught and graded in PE classes from Elementary schools, so kids grow up being aware of wellness. Include Yoga (stretching basically), Meditation and Mindfulness right from there.

Compliance as a Competitive Advantage

“…financial services companies face more than 50k regulations across dozens of federal and state agencies”

• 50K regulations? Complicated compliance is the same as no compliance, and there is always a motivation to find ways around it.
• How about first simplifying the compliance itself?
• If the government adopts digital currency, wouldn’t compliance for financial companies become much easier, at least for the money movement part — which is perhaps one of the biggest problems.

Tools for Stretching your Dollar

• Tools to stretch the dollar for a small business is definitely a good idea. Imagine a B2B platform, where every small business purchase is run through it and it finds the best vendor to buy the product / service, including price, compliance, quality, time and logistics factors taken care of.
• I, however, look forward to some company / platform that helps stretch the dollar for the end consumer, who is always feeling the pinch.

GPT Unlocks Credit Counseling

• I am excited about the potential of ChatGPT.
• Maryland, as an example, has well over 600K rental eviction notices per year and the state spends an extensive amount of money on counseling and enforcement. It’s similar story in other states as well. ChatGPT could help with the counseling part at least.
• I also think it can play a good part in helping kids’ education, middle and high school, provided there are tools to detect and control plagiarism. It should be under its own category.

The Infrastructure Stack for Business Banking

• All these tools are a band-aid to me. We just need UPI (India) like infrastructure, and then these issues are different and perhaps much easier

Fintechs Are Becoming Banks

• While regulation is still a question, there might be other implications of Fintechs becoming banks.
• For example, this might impact the current market value of existing banking players. With less savings moving to them, their Net Interest Margin Volume might come under stress, thus putting pressure on their operations and forcing more banks to make their operations more efficient, fold or merge.
• However, Fintechs would bring banking services to the unbanked / under-banked and hopefully even help with reducing cash economy footprint and bring more people into the tax system.

FedNow May Be Just the Beginning

• I am disappointed that there is no mention of India’s UPI as a model.
• Yes, payment networks like Visa would lobby hard against a UPI like model in the US, and FedNow is basically a slow moving project, perhaps intentionally, but something like UPI is really needed. The cost of moving money in the US today is quite high, especially for micro transactions, buying only 1 apple for 50 cents while on the way to the office. Today, merchants have no incentive to sell small quantities.
• Imagine being able to send 1$ to a charity when you are feeling good, and thus changing how charities work. Today, you can not do that.

Production-Ready Generative AI for Every Type of Game Asset

• Just like ChatGPT, Generative AI is a field that is exciting and lots of experimentation is going on.
• I am more interested in Generative AI helping businesses generate content for marketing, ad copies, images for presentations etc. A lot of time goes into these seemingly small items.
• Perhaps a FIGMA like company will rise to help businesses with such tasks.

Reshore and Restore: Bringing Everything Back Home

• The US has a lot of land that certainly can support sustainable farming & manufacturing and in the process surpass any other super power for generations to come, so this is exciting.
• With better supply chains (flying small freight and delivery vehicles for B2B at least) and better water management, this could be a big industry

I would be happy to hear what you think and if any of my comments add value to you.