What Is Going To Happen In 2016

It’s easier to predict the medium to long term future. We will be able to tell our cars to take us home after a late night of new year’s partying within a decade. I sat next to a life sciences investor at a dinner a couple months ago who told me cancer will be a curable disease within the next decade. As amazing as these things sound, they are coming and soon.

But what will happen this year that we are now in? That’s a bit trickier. But I will take some shots this morning.

  1. Oculus will finally ship the Rift in 2016. Games and other VR apps for the Rift will be released. We just learned that the Touch controller won’t ship with the Rift and is delayed until later in 2016. I believe the initial commercial versions of Oculus technology will underwhelm. The technology has been so hyped and it is hard to live up to that. Games will be the strongest early use case, but not everyone is going to want to put on a headset to play a game. I think VR will only reach its true potential when they figure out how to deploy it in a more natural way.
  2. We will see a new form of wearables take off in 2016. The wrist is not the only place we might want to wear a computer on our bodies. If I had to guess, I would bet on something we wear in or on our ears.
  3. One of the big four will falter in 2016. My guess is Apple. They did not have a great year in 2015 and I’m thinking that it will get worse in 2016.
  4. The FAA regulations on the commercial drone industry will turn out to be a boon for the drone sector, legitimizing drone flights for all sorts of use cases and establishing clear rules for what is acceptable and what is not.
  5. The trend towards publishing inside of social networks (Facebook being the most popular one) will go badly for a number of high profile publishers who won’t be able to monetize as effectively inside social networks and there will be at least one high profile victim of this strategy who will go under as a result.
  6. Time Warner will spin off its HBO business to create a direct competitor to Netflix and the independent HBO will trade at a higher market cap than the entire Time Warner business did pre spinoff.
  7. Bitcoin finally finds a killer app with the emergence of Open Bazaar protocol powered zero take rate marketplaces. (note that OB1, an open bazaar powered service, is a USV portfolio company).
  8. Slack will become so pervasive inside of enterprises that spam will become a problem and third party Slack spam filters will emerge. At the same time, the Slack platform will take off and building Slack bots will become the next big thing in enterprise software.
  9. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee and he will attack the tech sector for its support of immigrant labor. As a result the tech sector will line up behind Hillary Clinton who will be elected the first woman President.
  10. Markdown mania will hit the venture capital sector as VC firms follow Fidelity’s lead and start aggressively taking down the valuations in their portfolios. Crunchbase will start capturing this valuation data and will become a de-facto “yahoo finance” for the startup sector. Employees will realize their options are underwater and will start leaving tech startups in droves.

Some of these predictions border on the ridiculous and that is somewhat intentional. I think there is an element of truth (or at least possibility) in all of them. And I will come back to this list a year from now and review the results.

Best wishes to everyone for a happy and healthy 2016.

#blockchain#drones#entrepreneurship#Games#marketplaces#policy#Politics#robots and drones#stocks#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Anne Libby

    Happy New Year! Thank you, Fred, and everyone else at the bar. (Shout out to William and Shana, too.)

    1. awaldstein

      And back at ya Anne!

    2. fredwilson

      the moderators have a thankless job. thanks for mentioning them Anne. happy new year

    3. William Mougayar

      Thank you Anne and all the very best to you as well!

    4. Donna Brewington White

      Happy New Year, Anne!

  2. Dr Washington Y. Sanchez

    I definitely agree with prediction #7 😀

    1. William Mougayar

      I second that, but I’m very biased, therefore my opinion counts double 🙂

      1. Twain Twain

        Lol, William! Philosophically, I’m pro-Blockchain and Open Bazaar.The developer & product person in me, though, knows it’s a database architecture solution (data stack) rather than a data structure solution.That’s why whilst there may be some successful applications (smart contracts) built on Blockchain … They’re unlikely to break the oligopoly of the Big 4.The bits of Blockchain are getting there, but the atoms aren’t formed … yet.

        1. William Mougayar

          everything starts small and appears imperfect at first, but that’s ok.

          1. Twain Twain

            We started as the smallest specks of stardust and, billions of years later, are still imperfect so there’s something wonderful in imperfect…and improving, :*).Blockchain is solving a different piece of the economic systems puzzle from me.

  3. Tom Labus

    9. The complete collapse of the GOP is under way with “candidates: so far gone that it’s laughable. They regroup after a Goldwater like blow out by Mrs. C. Happy 2016 and I hope it’s good for everybody.Go see the Big Short, lots to think about

    1. fredwilson

      The most interesting thing to me in the Big Short is they were betting against the counterparties to their bet.

      1. pointsnfigures

        There are things I like about The Big Short, and things I think are totally untrue or misrepresented.

        1. Girish Mehta

          Examples ? The movie won’t make it to India for another few weeks, but thought the book was good (but then everything by Michael Lewis is highly readable).

          1. pointsnfigures

            The market isn’t exactly “rigged”. There are problems with market structure but to say it’s rigged gives the wrong impression. The Big Short lays all the blame on the banks. The banks certainly were bad actors, but the real culprit was Fannie and Freddie. Without them, the banks couldn’t have erected the house of cards that they built. The outcome of the financial crisis was Dodd-Frank, which might be one of the worst laws the US has ever passed, and might certainly be when you look at cost/benefit analysis. The beauty of The Big Short is the people that bet against the banks took a massive amount of risk. They had to endure a lot of pain, since the banks were marking the prices of the derivative trades they had on. When it fell, it fell quickly. In August of 2007, they finally knew they were going to be right.

          2. Tom Labus

            No one told the Banks to be leveraged out at 100, please

          3. pointsnfigures

            They couldn’t have done it without the Fannie and Freddie backstop.

          4. LE

            Actually agree with you. But to take the other side of this is it’s a bit like saying “if the IRS did a better job with auditing, I wouldn’t have been able to cheat so easily”. [1][1] “If cops enforced speeding laws better (which they could) I wouldn’t have been driving 100.

          5. Twain Twain

            I’m going to be a contrarian and say the problems are much more fundamental than Fannie and Freddie.They’re to do with data itself and the tools we’ve had to measure, model and understand that data.

          6. pointsnfigures

            Agree on data, tools etc. But the simple fact is without the government backstop, the banks couldn’t have built the monstrosity they built. Clinton and Bush policies on housing exacerbated the crisis. The Federal Reserve also should shoulder some blame since they looked the other way.

          7. Twain Twain

            We’re both right. Here’s an observation:POLICY & SOCIO-ETHICAL VALUES ARE QUALITATIVE.These don’t get inputted like-for-like into the QUANT models that underpin every financial system (ratings, balance sheet accounts, economic forecasting, prediction modeling).

          8. sigmaalgebra

            yup

          9. Twain Twain

            @sigmaalgebra:disqus too — Government backstops happen because government officials, like the rest of us, make decisions based on available data and the analytics of that data.We cut, dice and splice data according to our own objectives but still…If the data and/or the analytics is awry (inaccurate, irrelevant, out-of-date or missing key facts) then the decision-making will be weak and poor.

          10. Twain Twain

            @wmoug:disqus @fredwilson:disqus — Nakamoto believes that applying some more probability & bits and making the data more transparent and decentralized will decrease these risks.The bottleneck for better risk management and modeling of human decision-making and behavior is in the limitations of probability itself.Probability was invented in C17th to measure and model the behavior of dice — which, unlike us, have NO frameworks for self, others, language, meanings, values, language etc. — and then it got generalized over to deal with all data.That’s why “Meaning is something that has eluded computer science,” as Amit Singhal now says.The algorithmic base and intelligence of the machines (probability) is not the same as the algorithmic base and intelligence of humans (perceptions).It’s the difference between bits and atoms.I definitely have a different point of view from most people and put time+money+invention where mouth is.

          11. Richard

            I was studying financial mathematics at the time and remember attending a precrash 2007 ABA meeting covering credit derivatives. There was a very strong sense amonst several in the room that the music was about to stop.

          12. LE

            Movie wise (it’s about selling tickets and distribution) “banks = bad” is much easier to sell to a mass audience.

          13. SubstrateUndertow

            nobody is saying banks = “BAD”But it is still open for fruitful debate as to whether the present banking structures/rules continue, in the long run, to create a large institutionalized conflict of interest between private banking interests and a stable market based economy.

      2. LIAD

        Watched it yesterday. They romanticized the shorters and surprisingly i found myself rooting for them.Notwithstanding the right or wrong I liked how they had the courage of their convictions and their analysis to withstand multi year pressure, ridicule and premium payments to keep their trades live. Not that dissimilar to another asset class we here are more familiar with.

      3. Girish Mehta

        Haven’t seen the movie, will watch when it comes to India Jan 22.I think what was interesting to me in the book was it reiterated again the Power of Incentives. To the extent that what should have been the institutional smart money became the dumb money.Also fascinating that the characters such as Michael Burry that Lewis developed in the book were outsiders to the credit markets…they were stock market guys who came at this from the outside and had to explain to their investors what they doing making bets in the bond market in the first place.p.s. Lewis ignores in the book John Paulson who was a bond market guy.

      4. Richard

        No real surprise they had all the data and wrote and coded all the pricing hazard models

  4. William Mougayar

    #8. How about non-Slack bots for consumers. What’s your take on them?

    1. fredwilson

      I think it will happen. Kik is working hard on them

  5. LIAD

    AVC community 2016 prediction hackpad. AVC community 2016 prediction hackpad. AVC community 2016 prediction hackpad.

    1. fredwilson

      Hackpad is no more sadly

  6. Twain Twain

    Yes! Ears rather than wrist or over eyes (a reason VR will experience same consumer barriers as Google Glass):* https://m.youtube.com/watch…Apple will push into AI A LOT MORE.

    1. William Mougayar

      Does AR have a better chance than VR?

      1. Twain Twain

        Does Tom Cruise wear an Oculus Rift or any other headset/eye obstructor in this 2002 scene?* https://www.youtube.com/wat…Therein is the answer to natural Human-Computer Interaction and which of AR or VR will be preferred by consumers.Re the missing touch controller glove of Occulus Rift … It’s already possible to control content with naked hand and no need for electronics wearables or controllers of any kind.Apple has filed patents in that space as have Asia Pac techcos.

  7. Rohan

    Happy 2016 Fred and everyone! 🙂

    1. William Mougayar

      Rohan, you’re back! Just as Star Wars did too. Happy New Year to you.

      1. Rohan

        Always around here, William! Just quieter than before. :)Star wars was awesome! 😀 Happy new year to you too!

  8. William Mougayar

    #5 has already started to happen, but then you’d have to include Twitter, although they have a chance to wiggle themselves out of that potential downturn.

  9. Kalpesh Patel

    Happy New year and Agree on Prediction #8 about slack’s pervasiveness in enterprise. I also predict overtime some people will realize that slack is too much distraction for them and they would feel the slack overload similar to inbox overload problem. Slack is good for synchronous communication and serving as an enterprise communication bus/archive but it wont be an email killer.

    1. AndyGCook

      I’m working on building a wiki-style collaboration tool on top of the Slack Platform to make asynchronous communication easier in Slack, similar to Confluence. It’s in beta right now, but you can sign up to check it out once we’re ready if you’re interested – http://tettra.co.

  10. Nick Grossman

    Love the tone of this year’s list. Happy new year!

    1. William Mougayar

      It kind of blurs the lines between “wish list” and predictions 🙂

    2. fredwilson

      Tongue in cheek?

  11. pointsnfigures

    HNY. I don’t think Trump will be the nominee. Democrats better watch out for the Bernie Sanders wing of the party. It continues to grow, and it doesn’t fly.Tech workers leaving will be interesting. Will they start new companies, or will they flee to safe jobs at places like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft and the rest of corporate America?

    1. Thomas Grota

      I somehow agree with this, hence Republicans will see the consequences of having Donald as candidate. Their wish for power will push them for a more realistic candidate. But having TheRealDonald as candidate would be funny and big business for all daily shows. Come on! you can’t take away that one from us. Please!

    2. Matt Zagaja

      I think it depends. There is now a good segment of “tech workers” that are money train people (not passionate about tech but are there for a job) and I think they’ll leave for adjacent sectors in corporate America. There are plenty of non-tech jobs that can benefit from people with software skills and I think that the more forward thinking large companies can leverage lots of advantage out of this. For the more technical people I don’t think Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. will be bashful about hiring them.

      1. John Revay

        GE comes to mind w/ their recent new ads. Although I hate the fact that they will likely leave CT.

        1. Matt Zagaja

          Immelt made it clear that the situation is about recruiting (even though he whines about the taxes) and while there is no doubt that Boston has a big tech ecosystem, the Boston metro area is suffering from the same tech industry impact on rents and housing prices that is pushing up labor costs. Boston is a ton of fun if you’re a young single guy like me, or making a ton of money, but many people are making big sacrifices to keep affording the area whether it’s having roommates despite being married (sometimes with kids!) or commuting long distances for work every morning. Between that and taxes (MA already has the “unitary tax” that Immelt has been complaining about) I’m not convinced the corporate office moves out in the end. Maybe they move and open an office for the software people in Kendall Square like a lot of other companies, and use that to recruit people and keep open the option that they might move to cheaper regions within the company as they grow into it.

    3. Anne Libby

      I think it’s going to be Bernie.

  12. JimHirshfield

    Didn’t I read that Fidelity raised Twillio’s valuation? Counter trend that I’m guessing you’re not complaining about ;-)Happy New Year!

  13. Hristo Odiseev

    Thank you, Fred! Wish you all the best for 2016. Stay as relevant as you are for the tech industry and keep producing my morning reads. Most importantly have a healthy one!!!

  14. Ronnie Rendel

    Regardless of how they pan out, the “predictions” at a minimum pack a ton of insight into what’s going on now.I’m also short Apple, for no other reason that it’s been a great run, but it can’t go on forever and I don’t see ground breaking innovaton that will warrent a new run. My question is regarding Google – at $770/share, the price doubled in1 year, trippled in the past 2 years.Google’s revenue (or ABC rather) do not support this price, and a lot of it is speculation on future value. If Google delivers on its side projects that we will see the stock continue to grow, but notice they are now putting a lot of emphasis on generating subscription income from products previously supported by advertising (YouTube Red, and forcing Gmail users to buy storage, etc.)So, where do you think Google is going?

    1. pointsnfigures

      Google would be a tough short. There will be one or two points in 2016 where the market will make Apple shorts pay dearly. But I agree, Apple will be lower on December 31, 2016 than it is today.

      1. Richard

        Apple is transitioning to a recurring revenue model. The iPhone alone is $32 month at 40% margins. Until something replaces the phone, the Apple run continues.

  15. kirklove

    Not the most upbeat list, brah.Hoping you are right on number 4. I’m just now getting into drones and learning to fly a small indoor one. I’d love to get a prosumer one, though not knowing the legalities is making me hold off. If they said, “You can fly this here in Prospect Park legally” I would get one. Until then, too much confusion.5, 6, 8, 9, and 10 are already kind of happening.

    1. fredwilson

      Best trick to making predictions: predict what is already happening !!

      1. kirklove

        So my Sixers will stink again NEXT year, too!? 🙁

        1. kidmercury

          c’mon man! 2 out of the last 3 are wins! winning is already happening!!! 🙂 #trusttheprocess

          1. kirklove

            I know, right!? Christmas miracles!!! As long as we stay one game behind LA this year, I’m cool with the process. 😉

          2. Salt Shaker

            Philly sports are imploding this year (Sixers, Eagles, Phillies).Is there hope for the Soul, and I mean the Bon Jovi owned Soul, although my comment amusingly does work quite well as a double entendre.

          3. kirklove

            Apologies to my Jersey brother Jon, but I don’t count the Soul. And I don’t follow hockey in all honestly – though have a ton of respect for Flyer fans – the most loyal and die hard of all us Philly fans actually.

          4. Richard

            phillies and mets don’t ever seem to play well in the same year

        2. pointsnfigures

          Painful to watch…..but at least the court and uni’s look good.

          1. kirklove

            I do respect the old school uni’s.

      2. LE

        In the past, you’ve never agreed that you are “smart” enough to do things like that..please keep in character.

    2. LE

      I’d love to get a prosumer one, though not knowing the legalities is making me hold off.Save your money you will get bored with it after playing a bit. The reason is it’s to easy and not a challenge.As support (other than my otherwise useful insight based on experience) I present this listing of used DJI’s on ebay (these are completed sales). The good news is when you get bored assuming it’s not damaged there is a ready market:http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.h

      1. kirklove

        The DJI 3 Advanced is def the one I’m eyeing. Those used eBay prices aren’t much less than a brand new one from B&H (and I love buying from them). For some reason people pay MORE for an auction item. That makes no sense to me.As for getting bored – unlikely in my case. Once I decide I want a gadget (which isn’t too often actually) I use the ton out of it. If I had regular, legal, safe places to fly I would go often. My kids really love the Hubsan X4 I have. Granted that’s $40, not $1,000. And for now we’re happy with that. But a boy can dream 🙂

        1. LE

          If I had regular, legal, safe places to fly I would go often.You do. It’s called NJ (where you grew up). I actually have a place right next to where my office is which is quite large. I took my traditional RC and flew it there although haven’t done that in quite some time. Parking lot borders a field. Also a big former hospital complex (with a real heli pad) where they demolished the hospital. Plenty of open space.But I get your point because if you need to get in a car and drive to someplace to fly it not the same as going out and walking somewhere.The good news is this. The true cost is really the net asset value meaning you can buy it and then sell it on ebay. So the net cost isn’t as great as buying a used Dell tower computer that nobody wants.

  16. Emily Steed

    Great list! Love it. I am especially fascinated by the development of the drone market. One more prediction please – all ideas welcome: which NYC-based startup sector will be most likely to embrace standardizing internal policy and compliance functions?

  17. kidmercury

    other early adopters of VR (but behind gaming of course) will be physical therapy and education. killer apps waiting to be born there…..

    1. Richard

      You’ll need do a little PT to realize that widespread use of VR is not going to happy anytime soon.

      1. kidmercury

        My wife is a physical therapist…..it’ll definitely take time, but the idea is creeping into their consciousness. If the right solution emerged, I think a lot of pt clinics would embrace.

        1. Donna Brewington White

          Like the sound of that– “my wife” — congrats again!

          1. kidmercury

            thanks!

  18. aminTorres

    Fred, happy new year, love the bold tone of the list.I was hoping to read any thoughts on solar, space, education, tech geography outside the US, New York as it relates to tech and education.

  19. Salt Shaker

    Donald J. Chump is the best thing that ever could have happened to the Democratic party. You think Romney mis-read the market? If The Donald becomes the GOP nominee, he’ll fail even more miserably than Mitt in areas of perceived party need/weakness (e.g., women, minorities). Fear is not a sustainable strategy, unless some heinous national or worldwide event happens between now and the election, which sadly is always a possibility.Trump has demonstrated at least once his ability correct governmental ineptitude, and that’s when in the late 80’s he rebuilt the Wollman skating rink in NYC’s Central Park, when the city botched the job. Uncharacteristically, however, he did miss out on a great branding opportunity by not re-naming the rink’s Zamboni, the Trumponi, which rhymes with Spumoni, which is exactly what he’ll soon become–desert.

    1. LE

      (e.g., women, minorities)Not if he picks a woman who is a minority as a running mate. He is strategic and smart enough to do that.

      1. Salt Shaker

        Doubt anyone high on your or my list of female minority candidates would likely want to become Trump’s lap dog. His wife Melania has those qualifications, though. Maybe he’ll choose her as his running mate. (He’ll no doubt view the ticket as another branding opp–Trump-Trump.)

        1. LE

          Forgot to add “an unknown”. And to be clear I have no doubt that he could even convince someone who despises him to be his running mate. It’s human nature. Besides, like marriage and dating he only needs to find 1 special person not 1 person per week or 6 per day. Totally doable.My attorney is married to a hispanic federal judge. I’ve never asked him what he thought of Trump but I am pretty sure if I posed the question he would think “hmm this would be great for my law practice even if she lost” (and he would be right).

      2. Thomas Mullooly

        He could select Omarosa to be his running mate!

      3. JLM

        .We’ve had this convo — Condoleeza Rice.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  20. aminTorres

    Btw #10 is scary, I think this statement merits an entire blog post.

    1. pointsnfigures

      not sure it’s scary. but, it will stir the pot with some creative destruction which is good.

  21. Salt Shaker

    #6: I don’t see TW spinning off HBO as its fundamentally the company’s cash cow. That said, I do think we’ll see consolidation among 2nd tier cable networks (e.g., Viacom, AMC), who’ve lost a fair amount of leverage w/ MSO’s due to cord cutting. Cable and telco operators don’t need to pay increased carriage fees for 2nd tier networks, while consolidation delivers more leverage to an acquiring company. (Even the mighty ESPN is experiencing a bit of recent duress.) I also see someone like Yahoo, Netflix, Amazon or even Apple purchasing a sports and/or movie rights package from one of the leagues and/or studios, and the beginning of a stronger migration to OTT distribution. It won’t replace the traditional sports or in-theater distribution system, at least short-term, but OTT is a way to extract more revenue for content.

    1. Thomas Mullooly

      They could/will remain the largest shareholder after a spin-out. It’s a great way to immediately monetize a chunk.

      1. Salt Shaker

        I guess. TW already spun off their cable assets and their publishing arm into separately traded companies, as the latter def became a drain on earnings. It’s not as if TW’s remaining assets, Turner and Warner Brothers (a far more cyclical biz), aren’t profitable, so the big Q is how much incremental value, if any, is there in a separately traded HBO? One can frankly ask the same question of Disney and ESPN.

    2. Michael Elling

      My bet is that once Netflix has expanded enough internationally they will turn their attention back to live and premium and bill by the minute or show. Not entirely sure how and when they enter. But then it’s game over and lights out for the vertically integrated LinearTV model. (See my comments elsewhere about the laughable and deplorable OTT video solutions from the incumbents.)Everyone talks about software and mobile eating the world. It will be (nay, it is) video eating the world and eating mobile (see T-Mobile’s AYCE video model) as the latter has become the preferred (not only) access modality. Netflix’s layer 2 scale is unbelievable and it is the true engine behind AWS.

  22. Richard

    Apple had record revenues in 2015, upper 20s growth rates and 40 % gross margins. If the wheels are coming off its because they are flying

  23. William Mougayar

    It’s interesting how predictions reveal our biases. I think it’s called “hedonic forecasting” 🙂

  24. Beautyon

    Number 9 will not come to pass. Trump is not against immigrant labour, he is against illegal immigrant labour, which is a very different thing. He has said over and over that legal immigration is necessary and beneficial.Paying attention to the details is very important both in tech and politics, and is apparently hard to do!

  25. Richard

    Biggest missed prediction of 2015 and 2016 is Amazon

    1. awaldstein

      Agree that they are the ones that can change the transportation paradigm

    2. Susan Rubinsky

      Add in their integration of drones (and other logistics and transportation verticals). A beauty to watch.

  26. Steve Poland

    I’d love to see a full post on the future of online publishing. I wish a player would emerge that’d let me pay $10/month for ad-free content from 500+ sites (example). OR, a service like Spotify that’s publishing from various sites (500+) and I can view it in their app– with ads that are native (not ads that screw up pages I’m reading), or I can pay $10/mo for ad free (which may end up being a $10-$20/CPM — although at that time they could stop looking at CPM as it’d be a subscription model). I would pay FWIW.

    1. JLM

      .I agree more with you than you do with yourself. The genius of The Drudge Report is its aggregation.Well played.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    2. Aviah Laor

      This is a great idea, I actually thought it would be obvious before considering to give the content to FB. The dilemma: $10 a month is what publications currently expect just for their own subscription. In addition, it will dilute the perceived value of the print subscription, which usually includes the digital copy for free. However, it sure looks better than letting FB control your content.

    3. Bruce Warila

      I like this. How about a browser that strips out ads, bills me, and then pays content providers what they would have gotten for the impression. Billing occurs once a month.

    4. Matt Zagaja

      Google has been doing some stuff in this space (YouTube Red, Google Contributor) but I don’t think it has really taken off.

    5. Simone

      Yes. And I would like to have the option to pay by article on any media platform, I have a few favourite writers but I don’t want to pay full subscription for one article per week or so. There is a start up doing this in Germany perhaps.

    6. Syns †

      Hey man, I’m not sure any other way to do this. Do you have ANY of the @’s on the list left? Any at all? If you do, please take the time to tweet me @DUALTAGE 🙂 <3

  27. JLM

    .All good and interesting and provocative predictions. Pissing on the campfire a bit:#4. The FAA will regulate the snot out of drones and DHS will be right there at their elbow. The FAA has a very difficult job and while drones will likely be limited to some low altitude, every plane has to fly through that airspace.As a pilot who has dealt with the FAA for years, they are slow, pedantic, tedious, and did I mention slow?There is almost no way to work with them and the American airspace regulations have been settled for years and years. The airlines — the big players with the FAA — will not embrace the idea of drones being ingested in their jet engines.Law enforcement is going to oppose any drones over cities. You will be able to shoot pics of your ski house and lake house, maybe.Drones will be used in the delivery of terrorist violence in 2016. Already, drones — big ones — are military vehicles. The transition from recon to firepower has long since begun.#9. The tech sector is not a pimple on the electorate’s ass as it relates to national politics — vote counting perspective.They also don’t even register in the Electoral College states that are going to determine the next President. California, New York are already in the Democrat nominee column before they print the ballots.This is just knowing how the system works and not engaging in wishful thinking. Tell me the state that there is enough tech to flip from R to D? Typical naivete by the tech navel gazing folk who are brilliant in their own field but clueless in much else.Folks are not remembering the “schlonging” the Republicans gave the Democrats in 2014. It was the worst beating since the 1920s. This was the Everyman voting their pocketbook. Trump’s greatest strength arguably.Mechanically, mid-term elections are like the Spanish Civil War, an opportunity for the parties to try out all their messaging and GOTV ops.Notice that nobody is talking about abortion this time around — Planned Parenthood is breaking bad against abortionists and baby choppers, a very tough position to defend. This is all Reince Priebus’s doing. He was the architect of 2014 and it worked.Keep your eye on Reince. He has the RNC in the black like never before and while candidates cannot coordinate with superpacs nobody said Reince couldn’t. He is all about winning elections and independent of the GOPe for now.I hold no brief for Trump but anyone who thinks this guy is not going to be competitive should check with the GOPe and President Jeb Bush. He’s beaten the GOPe and the Bush family like a rented mule. Lean, nimble, agile, full of fight.We would have seen a President Romney if Mitt had half of Trump’s moxie and cojones.This is not cheerleading, this is just math. If there is a Republican ticket with a Florida based VP or top of the ticket, you can stay home on Election Day. Again, simple Electoral College math.The election will turn out to be not close. Surprisingly. Second round of 2014 perhaps.The Hillary-Bill Clinton “war on women” has its rifle pointing in the wrong direction. It is never a good thing to be accused of rape. They can probably sew up the Cosby wing of the Democratic party but not much more. People forget that Bill Clinton was put into office by Ross Perot and has never really been box office gold.I predict that Hillary gets indicted. Boom!More than 8% of all of her emails are now readily identified as containing “classified” information. The case that the FBI is building is based on evidence, not public opinion, not the media.The FBI Director, who is appointed for 10 years for this very reason, is on the outs with the White House over the implications of police misbehavior, Black Lives Matter, etc. He has had a couple of shouting matches with Pres Obama which are a prelude to going his own way on the Hillary matter.I also think that Pres Obama is not going to appreciate the wholesale abandonment of the Clinton hero worship of his regime and “accomplishments” and may just light the match to burn her down. Pardoning her would be the death knell for her election.With decent odds, I will make book on the FBI’s taking action against Hillary before the election. Inside dope: the two guys who worked the indictment of Gen Petreaus have just been added to the Hillary investigative team. They only write indictments. Nothing else.Predictions:#1. Syria will still be ruled by Bashar al-Assad on 31 Dec 2016 and the Russians will be the “go to” guys in the Middle East.#2. Oil will be less than $30/bbl and will touch $20 during the year. The price of gasoline in Texas will be $1/gallon (not such a big thing as it is $1.57/gal today). Biggest tax cut ever.#3. VC’s will mark everything to market. There will be blood in the streets. People will look back and say, “WTF were we thinking at those valuations?”#4. The American people will be on the verge of revolt over immigration and the people who work with their muscles will elect the next American President. Could be a guy named Cruz.#5. Fred Wilson will be grinding it out like a boss. He will dial in 16 posts but the rest will be pure genius. We will continue to disagree on politics but he will come around after Hillary is indicted.#6. The AVC community will continue to be the most civil, thoughtful place to get a cup of Joe or a beer and converse with smart, smart, smart folks. Comity will drown the discordant voices.#7. Bitcoin will disappear. Blockchain will still be looking for the killer app at 12-31-2016 but when it comes, Wm Mougayar will be riding the first pony in the parade. Fred will have funded the parade?Happy New Year, y’all! Be good to yourselves.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    1. LE

      We would have seen a President Romney if Mitt had half of Trump’s moxie and cojonesIt’s more than balls or moxie. Trump is entertaining and so people want to listen to him. [1] He’s part Howard Stern and part Joan Rivers (really ever notice how he handles a spurious boo? Turns it into a Joan Rivers “oh please”. He actually is even a bit of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddie Shack.[1] And that is a big part of sales. Getting people to listen to what you are saying. Not taught in MBA school either. Similar I am guessing to being a great military leader. The words just roll off the tongue much better.

      1. Dave W Baldwin

        He will have to change delivery though. For instance, when Clinton made the claim regarding Trump being used for ISIS Recruitment, he had the perfect opportunity to become more “Reagan” and say to the crowd, “Well my friends, I guess you’ve heard the latest claims from the other side… I guess since they can’t blame Bush anymore, they have to now blame me for their own failures and shortcomings.” Something like that. The thing to watch for is if Rubio gets serious. All the pundits miss the bigger picture regarding him. He doesn’t have to win since he’s young. Yet, if he were to get energized, he’ll overtake Cruz since Cruz only gives the same ol’ Talk Radio buzz and Trump sounds like a contestant on whichever American Idol show.In the end, I agree with what Fred posted back when regarding Kasich.

        1. LE

          I agree with what Fred posted back when regarding KasichDon’t remember what Fred said about Kasich but boring doesn’t get the girl or win the election [1][1] Unless there is some mitigating circumstance like big schlong or big bank account.

          1. Dave W Baldwin

            I was just referring to whom would do a better job. Hell, he’d be better off if he’d stop the arm movements and change over to delivering what would happen for today’s voter if he were on the job. All of this resume shit is boring as hell (Christie is even worse) and it’s time to start talking about details.

    2. fredwilson

      cut and paste this and cross post it on big red car. it’s too good not to get more airplay

      1. LE

        He would get more airplay if he cut it into shorter readable chunks across 3 or 4 comments rather than 1 big comment.

      2. Vineeth Kariappa

        You have almost 50x traffic he has, he has his url on your page. he is diverting your traffic to his website 🙂

    3. Rob Underwood

      Colorado.

      1. JLM

        .Colorado will go Republican.In 2014, Gardner beats Udall (incumbent Dem, big Obama guy, never backed down from Obamacare) for Senate 48.5% to 46% with balance going to fringe candidates. The fringe voters were all “anybody other than Udall” voters.Colorado is a big “guns” state and will turn on this issue. Next week, Obama is going to push every undecided gun owner in America into the Republican column with his anticipated executive order.Oddly enough, what I know of his order is just fine. It is a head fake but one that will cost the Dems in the close gun states, like Colorado.The only wild card in Colorado is the influx of Californians who left Cali for a reason. They knew they were going to a more conservative state so it is unlikely to tip the balance.Count Colorado for the Republicans.If I were picking a state, it would be Virginia. They elected McAuliffe (big pal of the Clintons) as Governor. It is also a bit of a gun state.The Republican candidate, Ken Cuccinelli (former AG), was a big anti-abortion guy and it cost him the election. The NOVA phenomenon is a real problem for Virginia.The Dem Lt Gov and AG have just dumped on CHL (concealed handgun license) reciprocity making the gun issue a big issue once again. This will work to the advantage of the Republicans.Gun control, in desperate times like this, is a losing issue for the middle. It drives them to the right.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    4. george

      In top form-enjoyed the reading!See what happens in November…

    5. Twain Twain

      WOW and then some! We learn so much we didn’t know when you and Fred go into this gear that few can go into.Question for you: “Are people who work with their muscles mutually exclusive from the tech navel gazing folk?” because there was media commentary after Obama won his first election that it was largely due to the campaign team’s social media savvy.So will 2016 be won by appealing to the technorati or to people with muscles who don’t spend much time on social media but pay more attention to what helps them to earn and keep more money in their pockets?

      1. JLM

        .The muscle workers are as far from the tech navel gazing folk as the species can possibly be.On Monday, I was coming back through a blizzard in the Panhandle and making my way back from Colorado for Christmas and skiing. Rabbit Ears Pass, Loveland Pass, Raton Pass, Amarillo, Lubbock, Abilene, Lampasas to Austin.I stop in the DQ in Lampasas for a dip cone to reward the safe passage and I pick up a local circular. It is advertising for rock masons at $13/hour.A good rock mason takes 5-10 years to learn his trade and is something that strong backed illegal immigrants learn to do. Mexicans are born to be rock masons.Thirteen dollars an hour!I used to hire rock masons for $25/hour twenty years ago and be happy to get them.Maids in my neighborhood make $20/hour. McDonald’s pays $15/hr to start.This is the ugly underbelly of the impact of illegal immigration and the contracting economy. Muscle work has cratered.I attach the evidence. It is true of all muscle based labor even skilled labor. These are the angry people in America and this is what drove the 2014 election and what Trump is tapping into.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. Twain Twain

          Thanks for real-world context. Often, we forget there are entire populations who don’t find their next roles on LinkedIn.In some ways, it seems like Trump and Boris Johnson (potential candidate for Prime Minister) share similarities:* Liberal media think they’re gaffe-prone and their own parties cringe at their honest un-PC comments;* Sections of the potential electorate like their “shooting from hip, telling it as it is” personas;* Huge name recognition because of personal charisma;* Detractors say they’re privileged and out of touch with “common person in the street” (e.g., muscle workers); and* They’re smart cookies (academically and professionally) and their “gaffes” may be tactics to monopolize media attention(?).* https://www.youtube.com/wat

          1. JLM

            .I make this observation — the world is full of bullshitters and very few real doers. The doers have a big advantage, they know how hard it really is to get stuff done. How difficult it is to effectively lead.I am totally mystified and captivated by life because I happen to be the luckiest person on the planet. I was literally born on Ash Wednesday and if your mother is one of a baseball team of Irish beauties named “Brennan” you know what that means.We privileged few with our slightly more agile brains and opportunities are so blessed that we cannot comprehend how difficult it is to be “one of them.”This has always driven me to do stuff that tests myself or that humbles myself. I like to drive nails, as an example. That love of sawdust and nails drove me to become a developer and build high rise office buildings in which I invested not money but my soul.Then, I discovered it was both more noble and fun to renovate old high rises.It is hard out there for a rock mason and there is no mystery why guys like Trump who can tap into that anger are getting traction.One hard observation — Trump is going to do just fine with the traditional Democratic unions because they are working men at their core. Maybe even the leadership who will realize Trump respects work.I hold no particular brief for Trump, might vote for him but he just might be the right bit of medicine for the US right now. Like Churchill during WWII who was then unceremoniously cast out after the war having outlived his utility.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        2. ikonoklast

          Mexicans are not born to be rock masons, they’re born to be whatever the fuck they want to be.

        3. aminTorres

          “Mexicans are born to be rock masons.” as someone who has developed respect and admiration over the years for you thru AVC, I find this comment alarming.

          1. creative group

            Why?A person usually are who they are. Some can see it faster than others. Few things are of predisposition. Many views and attitudes are learned behavior.

          2. aminTorres

            Pure gold.

      2. creative group

        Twain Twain:A question….If a person, entity or PAC spends billions on a position or support of a position and the outcome is not what the intended funding was given would a smart person actually listen to any talking point they continue to push? I think not. Billions that could be used to find education for students.

        1. Twain Twain

          Everything’s an experiment and everyone’s imperfect and learning.

    6. Donna Brewington White

      You have more cogent thoughts in a morning than most of us have all week.

      1. mdelvecchio

        right. speak for yourself

        1. Donna Brewington White

          Fair enough.

    7. William Mougayar

      That’s too funny… Whether you were serious or not on some of these points, you’ve now committed yourself to be accountable on 12-31-2016 and will have to write an assessment post to see where you were right or wrong. I predict you will be 60% correct on these, but I can’t tell which 60 it is.

      1. Donna Brewington White

        You’d make a great politician, William. Happy New Year!

        1. William Mougayar

          oh no…you and Arnold think so too. Are my comments too diplomatic?I might have to go back to my arrogant self! Best Wishes to you and your wonderful family, Donna.

      2. Vasudev Ram

        Like Ogilvy? on advertising: Half of advertising is effective, we just don’t know which half.Or was it John Wanamaker who said that:https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…See Miscellany section of that page.

    8. Dave Pinsen

      Trump is giving a masterclass in how to use social media as a candidate.

      1. JLM

        .Not just social media, MSM also.The media gives him “earned media” like a boss.Even funnier, the ratings of shows he is on go so high that the biz guys pimping advertising behind the scenes are begging the “journalists” to get Trump on their shows. He is able to “call in” at his leisure.He has probably gotten $200MM of earned media and not spent a cent.He is also a “natural” which counts for a lot.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      2. Simone Brunozzi

        Trump is just copying Berlusconi. We had our Trump in Italy for 20 years. You will not get rid of him soon 🙂

        1. creative group

          Simone:Many have supported Berlusconi in Italy during those years. Many will support Trump in the U.S. no matter the slant.

    9. Matt Blake

      You’re correct the tech industry is both too small and in states that aren’t important in electoral college math, but the problem with trump in the general is tech isn’t the only group that’s not so vehemently anti-immigration, and he could do things like drive democratic voting Hispanics to the polls in states like Colorado and Florida. Obviously this stuff is all complex, but his level of xenophobia is bad enough to get a lot of denouements from main stream folks on the right which takes something.

      1. JLM

        .Trump is absolutely NOT going to appeal to everyone. That is a fact and even Trump cannot change that. He only has to win what he has to win to win the Electoral College vote.There are some states he can’t win even if his running mate is the Holy Ghost.The Hispanic vote has been a shoo in for the Democrats for decades. This is obviously why the President is so keen to get more illegals out of the shadows and onto the voting rolls.Here is a pretty brutal analysis of it.http://www.pewhispanic.org/…Much of this is already dialed in and has been for half a century. George W Bush did the best in recent times and he won 40% against John Kerry.The Bush vote was a combination of his being from Texas, speaking very good Spanish, and his opponent being a whiter brand of white bread.The Hispanic vote will have a huge problem voting for a woman candidate. That is a cultural consideration. This could turn out to be a very big problem for the Democrats. El Jefe is not Ella Jefe.The Hispanic vote will continue to have a real problem with abortion — read Catholic Church. This will be a whisper campaign kind of thing conducted at the Catholic Churchs nationwide. But, again, only in the states that matter.With the possible exception of Florida, the Hispanic vote doesn’t reside in states that will figure into the Electoral College calculus.If Trump were to have a Rubio on the ticket as VP, much of this would reverse itself and the Republicans might get Florida and the Hispanic vote in a landslide.The election will be decided in a handful of states — Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and a few more. This is just Electoral College math.I suspect that Trump will target Hispanics if someone tells him the gain is worth it. Remember he employs a lot of Hispanics at his golf courses [this is a joke, y’all].Trump is not likely to beat himself. Someone is going to have to beat him and he is likely to take the fight to the Democrat candidate like never before seen in Presidential politics.If the media continues to be his lap dog — based on free/earned coverage — his messaging will resound across the land.The country is angry. This anger propelled the Republicans to a huge victory in 2014. The House/Senate is trying not to foul the brand. The country is angrier today than it was in 2014.The actual results of Democrat governance are a real problem for the Democrat nominee and the Republican nominee will be running against Pres Obama and the Dem opponent — just as candidate Obama did in 2008 successfully. [One more reason why Jeb is sucking air.]JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    10. sigmaalgebra

      Nice work — clever wording and much more succinct than my effort!#3. VC’s will mark everything to market. There will be blood in the streets. People will look back and say, “WTF were we thinking at those valuations?”As I understand the unicorns, the last investors in got deal terms that leave them fairly safe. According to the old VC deal terms, the unicorns are not worth nearly $1 B.So, with the “mark to market”, the early VC investors will lose their tens of millions, but the last in private equity, hedge fund, etc. investors will come close to breaking even with their hundreds of millions. So, some VC firm with a $1 B fund loses $30 million on a unicorn — another bad hair day with 12 ounces of spilled milk. So, drops of blood in the streets but not rivers.Thanks for the observation that “the tech sector” is not even as much as a “pimple” in fraction of the votes and, also, is concentrated in CA and NY already in the D column so will have no effect in the Electoral College.In my post here, I missed the FBI’s going after Hillary and the details. Nice work.I still suspect that the FBI wants do to a very thorough investigation so that everyone can say that there was was no cover up and that there were really good reasons for not indicting her. From some of what I’ve read, prosecutors can come up with lots of good, common, standard reasons to decline actually to indict her.Yes, that the two guys from the Petraeus case are on the team may change this.I can’t see why you put so much weight on Florida or Cruz.

      1. JLM

        .Florida is a crap shoot since the first Geo W Bush election v Alberto Gore.Whoever wins Florida get 29 electoral votes. That is a big win.Rubio — potential Trump VP — was Speaker of the House in Florida (meaning he can cobble together a statewide organization in a snap) and speaks Spanish.He puts every Hispanic state into play. Remember that Geo W won 40% of the Hispanic vote — spoke excellent Spanish, brother was Gov of Florida, from South. Highest ever.Reagan only won 37% in 1984. Mondale got 61%. Still, Reagan won which is a good lesson for all who think that Trump cannot win with an inferior Hispanic vote support.Geo HW Bush — VP during the 1986 amnesty — only got 25% which shows that the Hispanic vote was not grateful for the Reagan amnesty which indicates the strategy of pandering to Hispanics may not be the best strategy.Speaking the language is probably more significant. This is what W did.This is what Rubio could bring.The other thing is that the Democrats will have to spend money and defend their Hispanic states like California and the border states. This does not get you any votes but it costs time and treasure particularly if it is the bottom of the ticket carrying the fight. This is strategic.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. sigmaalgebra

          the strategy of pandering to Hispanics may not be the best strategy. It’s beyond me just why voting, US citizens of Hispanic descent should be especially (A) for a US politician who speaks Spanish and (B) against Trump due to his intention to stop illegal immigration and deport illegals.Or, it is just such voters who should be most concerned about illegal Hispanic immigrants taking their jobs.IIRC, Rubio has been the boy carrying water for all the people who want immigrant labor, from illegals to H1-Bs.However effective Rubio would be as VP, I have to believe that Cruz would be more effective and Condi Rice still more.Trump might consider my Congressman Dr. Chris Gibson, Republican, NY-19, US Army Colonel, seven deployments, two Legions of Merit, four Bronze Star Medals, the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge with Star, the Master Parachutist Badge and the Ranger Tab,http://gibson.house.gov/although I would not like to lose him.Maybe Trump and Gibson together could carry NY!Yes, Florida has 29 electoral votes; so does NY!NY has sometimes been willing to elect a Republican in a state wide race!

          1. JLM

            .Lots of Hispanic voters don’t speak English. I know this from my election judge experience and District Chairman gig.Cong Gibson is a very impressive chap. Hard to believe he got out at 24 given he had commanded a brigade in the 82nd Abn. That’s almost assuredly a star in the making plus being 1st in his C&GSC class is not chopped liver. Wow!My personal favorite would be Condoleeza Rice.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    11. Ellie Kesselman

      Excellent comment, BigRedCar! I was just about to suggest that you read sigmaalgebra’s comment, but maybe you have already. You should.I emphatically agree with your observations. Hillary WILL be indicted, if any shred of justice continues to exist in the USA. Bitcoin WILL disappear. That much can be divined quite clearly by reading /r/bitcoin which is the de facto clearinghouse for “State of the Bitcoin”. It is riven by block chain size debates, internecine core developer spats and LOTS of global Ponzi fraud! The block chain as a concept for something like digital notary services might develop into something useful over the course of time, and maybe there will be a Bitcoin successor, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for it.As always, it is good to see you, and I extend my best wishes to you and sigmaalgebra for a prescient, prosperous new year!

      1. JLM

        .One of the reasons I think Hillary will be dealt with BEFORE the election is that the FBI does not want to tangle with a sitting/elected President.It would be infinitely more awkward to do that honestly than it would be to deal with a candidate.This reminds me of Spiro Agnew. Folks have forgotten about that corrupt SOB because Nixon overshadowed him with his problems. Spiro Agnew was a sitting VP for goodness sake.The likely scenario is along the lines of Scooter Libby and US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, special counsel.Having had a very high security clearance, I just don’t see how Washington can ignore the security implications of the email server. It is much worse than the Petreaus fiasco.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. sigmaalgebra

          From what I’ve heard, but IANAL so don’t understand very well, is that(1) the “Petraeus fiasco”was just that, a “fiasco”,and a political lynching of ageneral the White Housedidn’t like and(2) prosecutors have a lotof discretion to consider ifany real harm was done or intended and in thecase of Hillary will concludeessentially “No.”Not that I like Hillary — instead, I really do not.

          1. JLM

            .Gen P and Hillary are represented by the same law firm. The lawyers know what’s at stake here and they aren’t working for free.DP had good representation.JLMww.themusingsofthebigredcar…

          2. sigmaalgebra

            As I understand what happened to DP, he was treated unfairly; a normal prosecutor acting normally would not have gone after him.Yes, of course, a prosecutor was fully able to file charges against DP, did, and apparently won. So, it appears that a similar prosecutor will also be fully able to go after Hillary and, judging from what it appears Hillary has done and what happened to DP, Hillary would lose.Uh, that Hillary hired the same law firm of DP, hmm — they weren’t successful for DP. Sure, maybe that that firm charges big bucks means that Hillary is actually somewhat afraid of a prosecution so wants good representation, just in case. Maybe Hillary knows some of what’s under some carpet and/or not in the e-mail traffic she submitted and wants a good defense just in case the FBI looks under that carpet.Yes, the FBI is investigating, and maybe doing a very thorough job, but AFAIK the FBI can’t actually prosecute Hillary, no matter what the heck the FBI finds.So, first-cut, the outcome of the Hillary case is up to a prosecutor. Then, since an AG serves at the pleasure of the POTUS, the outcome of the Hillary case is up to Obama. What was it with the AG during Watergate, the night of the long knives — naw, that was something else in history!Then maybe Obama would tell Hillary either (A) we file charges or (B) you drop out of the race for POTUS. I fail to see that Obama really wants either of those two.So, net, the simple solution for Obama, a “constitutional lawyer” and really, really good at making excuses in public, would be to announce that the FBI investigation did not find enough to justify a prosecution and, then, just drop it. Obama could just tell everyone to get used to it, stuff it, etc.In case Obama needs some help in coming to such a conclusion, maybe Hillary could make the Obama Administration an offer they couldn’t refuse.Or, Obama seems to want to take his last year and there do all he can to “fundamentally transform” the US, while fairly sure there’s nearly no chance he could be impeached. Or, the people who were so eager to sell Obama to the US and put him in the WH for two terms very much do not want to see him leave impeached.For Obama, let the FBI look under all the rocks, stones, bricks, pebbles, furniture, carpets, depose 10,000 witnesses, spend $500 million investigating, etc., fine. Actually let the AG prosecute Hillary? Nope, I don’t see it.It’s politics or, more accurately, power politics. The POTUS has a lot of power, and Obama is still POTUS and will be until past when no one cares about Hillary’s emails.

          3. yoshipod

            Yes, the White House didn’t like Petraeus so they made him Director of the CIA!

          4. sigmaalgebra

            Okay, they kicked him upstairs and, thus, got him out of their way.

          5. yoshipod

            Right, because the CIA never interacts with the White House for intelligence briefings and reports.

          6. sigmaalgebra

            I’m no expert, but the usual description is that what Petraeus did in his problem with classified information and/or with a woman was tiny, and the reaction of the higher ups was really severe. In strong contrast, what Hillary did with her e-mail was much worse. So, the usual conclusion is that Hillary has been getting especially lenient treatment while Petraeus was treated unfairly.There is likely more to the story for both Petraeus and Hillary, what the role of the White House was, etc. And likely we will never get the full story, at least not a correct one.In a word, it’s politics. In more words, power politics, dirty politics, dirty power politics.That’s a problem being promoted to several stars: The media, to get eyeballs for ad revenue, can be screaming to do something. Maybe the White House doesn’t want to do what the media wants. But an expedient, if dirty, thing for the White House to do is to pretend to do something and let the effort fail. To appear to have made a serious effort, send some highly regarded officer with several stars. Then, do something to make the officer fail. So, a high officer retires, and the White House gets the political result they want. Then, maybe not to appear to have done some such dirty politics, the White House could give the retired officer some civilian job, e.g., head of the CIA.Did this happen to Petraeus? Maybe. My guess is yes. Is such dirty politics possible in reality? Heck yes, that and much worse.

          7. creative group

            Give Petraeus a promotion because they didn’t like him. The conspiracy theories in the minds of this blogs contributors are asinine.

          8. creative group

            We hold similar sentiments. No sense of endearment for HRC blind supporters or the conspiracy theorist developing their talking points from Fox and Talk Radio. Amazing how they think that mindset is the majority of the U.S.Code talk: Take American back to where it use to be: GWB? Certainly not! Slavery? Absurd! Explanations when asked always vague.

          9. sigmaalgebra

            Of course the news as of yesterday is that the SecDef is considering demoting retired Petraeus, taking back one of his four stars. There are claims that the WH does not like the DoD, wants to micro manage it, has a huge WH National Security staff to do that, wants a puppet SecDef and has one, and still wants to stick it to Petraeus.And the news today is that Hillary had on her home e-mail server at least 12 messages with information that should be classified higher than Top Secret. Yes, supposedly the messages were sent to her and were not from her and were not marked classified when she got them. With that data, even if her prosecution is up to prosecutor discretion, she may yet go to trial.

          10. creative group

            The Secretary Of Defense is a Republican. Nothing to report unless another conspiracy theory.

          11. sigmaalgebra

            Good to know. The SecDev looks like a suckup to the WH, but, okay, that’s just image. So, just the usual — politics.So, maybe Trump will pick Petraeus as VP, and maybe that’s really what this is all about. So, if the SecDev looks at Petraeus and does not demote him, then that gives Petraeus a clean bill of health, e.g., for VP. Sounds like politics.Hmm — Petraeus as VP? Hmm.That would let Hillary off the hook? Blunt one of the best attacks against Hillary?Maybe not: Likely the FBI and DoJ will have this Hillary e-mail thing cleaned up in time so that in the general Trump won’t be able to attack her on it. Then Trump would be free to tap Petraeus. For much that Trump has said about the DoD, the Mideast, ISIS, the VA, etc., tapping Petraeus could look really good.

          12. creative group

            Sigmaalgebra:Petraeus has no chance of being appointed a local dog catcher.

          13. sigmaalgebra

            Early on Petraeus had some fantastic reputation. There was at least one super puff piece written about him. He was a combination of Albert Einstein, Jesus Christ, and Julius Caesar along with Generals MacArthur, Patton, and Rommel. There were suggestions he should get a fifth star.Of course, that puff piece was no doubt far from reality, and since then, I’ve not kept up or even got caught up on him.So, you believe that now he is unpopular? I have no good basis to argue, but what is your reasoning?

          14. creative group

            Sigmaalgebra:Petraeus reputation was impeccable until he allowed a woman to assist in ruining it. He is unable to be mentioned in the same breath as the former Generals because they were not disgraced or pled guilty to a felony crime and didn’t commit adultery.Republicans and Democrats always elevate humans to see them fall. No one is perfect. Any confabulation should be reserved for someone else more deserving. (sic)

          15. sigmaalgebra

            Okay. I didn’t recall all of that.We can’t have high officials in national security engaging in behavior that spies could use to compromise them. He knew that very well. Then, with adultery, he had lied to his wife. If he will lie to his wife, what will he do to others? E.g., would he lie to his subordinates? In that case, he is compromised as a leader in war.Okay. He was described as brilliant or some such. Well, he needed to be smart enough to keep his pants on.Hope he enjoyed it since he wrecked his career.

    12. Vineeth Kariappa

      Agree with more of your points (no #7) than Fred’s.

    13. Anne Libby

      To your point about Trump — which sent me back to Stephen King’s weirdly prescient *The Dead Zone* — the adoption of self driving cars is going to be influenced by things that I haven’t read much about.(While on a family visit I’ve been polling midwesterners on self driving cars. In the land of my birth, a car has different meaning than it does in my NYC cohort.)I look forward to discussions here and elsewhere on the huge structural changes that proceed in waves from self driving cars. For one thing, who’s looking at what happens when traffic tickets disappear?

      1. Susan Rubinsky

        People sure as hell aren’t going to like that self-driving cars obey the law, speed limits in particular.

        1. Anne Libby

          Yes — and all of the law enforcement/court action around people who break the law (and get “caught”), it’s got to be huge. Both in terms of people employed, and revenue to various municipalities.

        2. Pascal Stolz

          Except for the very fast growing baby boomer generation that soon won’t be able to pass a driving test and will, in drove, flock to self driving cars to regain a sense of freedom.

    14. jonathan hegranes

      Couldn’t agree more with fredwilson that drone regulation will be a boon for the industry.Since the news of registration and implementation for hobbyists in December, the weekly growth rate of http://kittyhawk.io/ doubled.Commercial registration is still a dreadful paper process, but pilots new and old are adopting with fervor.

    15. toddhoff

      The FAA is also in the process of being privatized, which could pose a regulatory block on drones, depending on who captures whom.

    16. gregorylent

      no collapses of one sort or another? .. infrastructure, economy, markets, political systems?

    17. rh

      The last prediction is the one that is worrying because in certain countries it may become challenging. Imagine a swarm of suicidal drone bombers unleashed on a target.

    18. Mark Gavagan

      FYI, “How Drones May Avoid Collisions by Sharing Knowledge”http://www.technologyreview…

      1. JLM

        .The orderly operation of flight space — the core mission of the FAA — is a matter of planning. A pilot getting ready to go somewhere files a flight plan with a specific routing, time of departure, altitude, etc.In this manner, the FAA punches the info into its system and that system loads it into their computers which then make certain there are not two planes flying toward each other on the same route (moreso when flying the electronic highways in the sky rather than going “GPS direct”) or otherwise through each other.When you stand ready at the end of the runway to take off, the tower controller sends you forth from the runway environment into the departure control to activate your flight plan and send you on your way.Tallyho, y’all!The FAA, the air traffic system, is quite good and well organized.Individual planes, like mine, have collision avoidance systems — organic and information based — which are based on telling the pilot to defend his little bit of heaven from intruders by pointing out the other traffic. Big planes command specific actions.The thinking amongst pilots and the FAA is well advanced.The issue is the care, feeding, training of new pilots who will be flying drones. Like any new pilots, they will have to learn something. In this comment, I suggest that will have to be the air traffic, collision avoidance system.Therein lies the rub — it takes time. It takes professional training and it takes experience.At 2K+ flight hours (not very long actually), I am filled to overflowing with what can go wrong when it seems like nothing can go wrong. That is the dividend of actual experience.I have no fear that the drone pilot and the FAA will make peace at under 500′ but it wont’ be unbox and play. It shouldn’t be, should it?JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

    19. creative group

      What was seconded seventeen times as confirmation of your politics slant is devoid of presidential facts and eight years of Republicans not occupying1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500.The Libertarians (a/K/a Republicans) view is always based upon their pocket strings. State politics aside (More to do with state redistricting) if Trump the savor of the what’s wrong with the privilege class verses the reality of the countries integrating and multi-cultural makeup will not provide the rosy outcome Libertarians, disgruntled tea party and domestic terrorists occupying the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on the federal building in Burns, Oregon (Just imagine if the protesters and looters in Baltimore had automatic weapons and occupied a federal building) is hoping no matter the multitude of flaws with HRC.The choices provided by Republicans and Democrats leave virtually no viable choice.A disgruntled Independent ranting about the landlocked political system in America.

      1. JLM

        .The crowd has wisdom.You are mashing up a lot of very different notions and a lot of “fun” but untrue facts.Still, you get it. It is a rant and who doesn’t dig a good rant?Rant on.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        1. creative group

          JLM:So you are attempting to rewrite history of the Republicans not occupying the White House for eight years. OKThe play on the Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove playbook. Just say it over and over and at least get some people to repeat it and believe it. Sorry we don’t read that playbook and only believe in facts.The redistricting and Republican turnout on State campaigns prevailed.

          1. JLM

            .Here’s a factoid for ya, CG.In 2014, the President famously said, “My policies are on the ballot.”Easily one of the stupidest utterances in the history of politics.What happened?Other than the biggest schlonging of the Democrats in a century?The Republicans got the Senate, the Republicans got a bigger majority in the House, the Republicans got more statehouses, the Republicans got bigger majorities in the statehouse they already had, the Republicans got more governorships.Rewrite that!BTW, the anger that was tapped into defeating 11 incumbent Democratic Senators is still out there. It was Obamacare then and it’s still Obamacare, immigration, foreign policy now. It is still this incompetent, feckless administration.Stay tuned. It’s going to be ugly on an ape even if Hillary doesn’t get indicted.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

          2. creative group

            Fox News, Conservative Talking heads and Donors (Who should be investing in the future of children) will only have a conspiracy fit on losing the coveted top spot if HRC wins. (As an true Independent there are no viable choices offered on either side). Those who made a living off Obama’s back should send him a percentage from the profits.Republicans are content with winning Local, State, Congressional and Senate races but continue to fail to win over the majority of the country with their tea party conspiracy theories and stretching facts or completely altering it. The birther movement lie targeting of Obama not being born in the United States is one of many. When a Non Republican candidate is actually born in Alberta, Canada who they support, they totally change their positions. No other reason than what is the obvious and it isn’t a difference in policy.

          3. JLM

            .Let’s spare offering advice or consuming advice from self-described “independents” particularly those who are beating the drum for Democratic interests.The Republicans are going to do just fine and if you think the Republicans are not focused on winning in November, I have a bridge in Brooklyn which is packaged and priced for an Independent.Hell, the Congress is afraid to draw breath in fear of adversely impacting the election.Just for the record — who started the Obama birther issue?Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign with the help of Billy Boy.I care not a whit about any individual candidate at this junction in time. If Cruz is in legal jeopardy as to his legitimacy to run for President — fuck him. He gets no special consideration on my part.OTOH, it is pretty clear that he is perfectly eligible and that it is a made up bit of silliness that is being promulgated by one Donald Trump.The Republicans don’t speak with a single voice — particularly during the primary season and until the silliness of Iowa and NH are decided. They are the Speedo contests. Silly.It’s all going to be fine.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  28. Dan

    Cars won’t be fully autonomous for some time. Bill Gurley is the only person I’ve heard with some realistic perspective here, like Fred’s view of Oculus being overhyped. If you have been around Google’s cars, you see the main problem is they lack eye contact. If you are a pedestrian or on a bike this is significant. What happens if some skaters troll a self driving car?Bitcoin prediction could be correct, but not because of mainstream bitcoin companies. There’s too much friction. 21 computer is likely the most frictionless way for anyone of any age or demographic to get started with bitcoin, so it will lead to widespread adoption.

  29. LE

    Republican nominee and he will attack the tech sector for its support of immigrant labor. As a result the tech sector will line up behind Hillary Clinton who will be elected the first woman President.At least two parts of the tech sector:a) Young idealistic and naiveb) Those that don’t worry about taxes for some reason perhaps because they feel it won’t impact them in some way.

  30. Kent Karlsen

    Agree on 3, 5, 7 and 9. Microsoft will be a stock surprice up >20%. Nyse beat nasdaq, both index down from todays points. Unicorn deaths. One huge social media consolidation. Green energy hoax scandal. Energy War, business and political conflicts close to real war. IoT enter clothing and sportwear for real. Robotics enter new business areas.

  31. Val Tsanev

    Happy New Year to everyone. This list I think will perform better than the last one of 0.500.

    1. fredwilson

      yeah, they cross posted this post over there today too.and i’ve been wrong about apple for so long that i might actually be right at some point

      1. bfeld

        And probably change your title to be more linkbaity, just like they do with mine.

        1. fredwilson

          for sure

  32. creative group

    Fred:I agree with the first paragraph prediction regarding Oculus or any VR platform having the ability to get in to the hands of regular people and have it work without requiring anything that is bulky or makes a person appear like an Alien and total geek. The Geeks love the entire experience because of the technology and wouldn’t care what others thought of it. The regular customer does care about what they are using and the way it makes them look.We agree with the prediction regarding Apple. We don’t think the metrics on Apple can substain. We think they have reached their plateau in selling an overpriced, late to market screen sizes for their handset. The wall has been reached with the current product. Now a new product or a reproduction of what another company puts out and they make it better may be a new revenue source. But the current one is coming to a halt.It has been a memorable year and many events that occurred many are glad to have it behind. If you had any positive experiences built on them for this New Year and if any were negative learn from the experience and don’t duplicate it. A positive thinking person would think that any experiences they had good or bad are teaching moments and provides a measuring tool for what to do more of or less of. We are looking forward to reviewing, listening, learning and commenting on forward ventures that will enchance our lifes.We extend to everyone a productive, rewarding and blessed New Year.

    1. fredwilson

      i’ve learned most of what i know by messing up, often badly

      1. George

        Brilliant…Epic Quote!

  33. Brandon Burns

    Your boldest predictions, 9 and 10 (in my opinion) are also so obviously going to happen, when you actually take time to look at what’s going on, that I now laugh when people say I’m nuts for being so sure both will happen.No nominee for a party’s nomination, this century, has had a lead as commanding as Trump has going into the primaries and lost.I, as I’m sure many folks, have countless friends in tech (specifically in SF) who have more complaints than compliments. In other news, recruiting into finance and consulting are both higher than they were before the 2008 crash (there’s an NYtimes story on this that I’m too lazy to dig up).I recently saw The Big Short, which thoroughly resonated with me, especially the opening quote:”It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t true. — Mark TwainHow many times do we say to ourselves “there’s just no way that can happen!” and it turns out we were wrong… and kinda knew it?Trump wins the nomination. Demand for tech jobs goes down. For sure.

    1. fredwilson

      i love that Twain quote too. it is so good.

    2. greyenlightenment

      sometimes what seems obvious isn’t. Your internal biases deceive you. Ppl have been predicting tech bubble 2.0 since 2009, and yet prices keep going up.

  34. creative group

    Fred:off topic. Is there a succesion plan to your blog? If you discontinue writing does it just go away? Would contributors gravitate to someone elses blog? Who are you listening, reading and blog(s) you subscribed?A list and why would be great. Thanks in advance….

    1. fredwilson

      no succession plan. i think of AVC as me. i don’t think people should have succession plans. when we are gone, we are gone

      1. Donna Brewington White

        As much as AVC takes on a life of its own it is not self-sustaining without you. Still needs you to breathe into it to keep it alive. But it must be fun sometimes to see the “wind it up and let it go” effect take place.

  35. awaldstein

    Wonder whether Amazon will start disrupting the shipping logistics duo by starting to buy airports, planes and routes.But agree on Slack.

  36. Austen Allred

    I’m confused about how number 8 will happen. The only people that can publish within your Slack team are the people who are invited, unless you’re using a hack like Slackin’ to turn it into an open community. Are those types of communities what number 8 is referring to?

    1. fredwilson

      people are spammers. most of the email i get is from people and i delete a lot of it.

    2. Kirsten Lambertsen

      I had the same question. I don’t see spam becoming an issue, but I do see FOMO being a problem, as well as a Twitter-like overwhelm problem. Tools for curating and prioritizing Slack flow are more what I think will flourish.

  37. Benedict Evans

    Meta-observation – you’re an Apple bear. Has something changed recently to make that call come right?

    1. fredwilson

      i’ve been bearish since it was clear that Steve’s days were numbered. i’ve been wrong for so long but i’m sticking with it. eventually i will be right. if not this year, then next, or the next, or the next

      1. Benedict Evans

        That’s a bit like calling recessions, though ;)My bear case (though I’d not commit to it) would be that Cook is Balmer – can run business for the current generation perfectly but can’t be relied on to make the jump to the next. And the jump to the next is quite a way away (especially if you think VR will be part of smartphones)

        1. Chad Wittman

          I’ve noticed that Apple’s ‘Halo Effect’ impacts bears in a different way. It seems to elicit ‘Devil Horns’ on their numbers, products, and actions. Can’t say that I disagree with the perspective, but it seems to be migrating towards an almost binary view. Perhaps Aumann’s agreement theorem should be considered?

          1. Benedict Evans

            The number of fanboys or, one could say, ‘anti-fanboys’ is far too small to affect any of these companies.

        2. fredwilson

          your colleague Marc once told me that when a founder leaves a company it is very hard, maybe impossible, to replace their visionary leadership. i’m not as bearish on non-founder leadership and have had decent success with non founder leaders, but at its core, Marc’s point is right. Apple is the only one of the big four that is not founder led. when it was clear that Steve was not going to beat his disease, i got negative on apple and have been negative ever since. i was way too early with that stance but i still feel it is the right one.

        3. SubstrateUndertow

          Steve helped Apple pick all the low hanging fruit/profits by shrinking the computer looking-glass.Cook is left to do the heavy lifting by consolidating the complex integration of personal cloud/wearable devices/services.Whether Cook is up to it or not that job portends a longer, more difficult, more integrative risk taking path.To me the Apple Watch “in-the-marketplace iterative risks” that Cook has now embarked on speak volumes about his leadership style.

        4. Matt Zagaja

          My bear case for Apple is that their major wins have involved occupying high end markets with luxury products and then expanding the customer base at that high end, but their recent efforts at this have failed. AppleTV is cool (and I have the older one) but Apple failed to forge the deal with the cable cos to be the box for Comcast, etc. which is where the big win was there. Now they seem confused as to what AppleTV should be. They seem to be starting an incursion into the gaming market (which presumably has some good margins?) and I love the Steelseries Nimbus controller they worked on, but the gaming experience on the software side is not as good as PS4, etc.The watch is awesome and I love it but it’s not clear that it’s actually luring people away from Rolex, etc. Instead many people seem to view it as an expensive competitor to FitBit, Jawbone, etc.

          1. SubstrateUndertow

            All these devices have a symbiotic eco-system intersection point.These larger product-intersection eco-system processes need to play out in their own natural time frames.These longer-term cross-product eco-system maturation cycles are breaking new marketing territory.Apple may fail at these larger product eco-system intersections but they deserve more credit for the risk/reach they are willing to shoulder.

        5. sigmaalgebra

          Supposedly Apple’s market cap is from essentially only their cash or just cash and existing products with zero evaluation for anything good and new in the future.

        6. Twain Twain

          Jump to next is not quite so far away. Are you going to write a prediction post for 2016 too, thanks.Apple has 2 main weaknesses they’re actively solving:(1.) AI — playing catchup to Google, FB, Amazon, IBM Watson.* http://www.reuters.com/arti…* http://recode.net/2015/10/2…Two sub-issues:(a.) Apple’s communicated its position on privacy and data. The oil of the other techco’s engines is … data and using that data to train their AI => deliver better product recommendations + advertising.(b.) Apple has a better approach to contextual AI than its competitors (in Beats) but they haven’t been able to deploy this effectively across their AI initiatives yet, imo.(2.) IN AR/VR, Apple has added to its ownership of PrimeSense, the creators of the Kinect technology, with Metaio, Perceptio and Voice IQ (augmented reality with AI and more naturalistic UX).

        7. Twain Twain

          For jump to next, the visionary has to have Quantum Intelligence — what Da Vinci advised, “Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else” so they can solve multiple related problems in the simplest yet most sophisticated way (e.g. iPhone) — and pragma.They also need to have the mental abilities Einstein, the father of Quantum Theory, talked about.If investors find these types … they can look forward to “changing the world, making dents in Universe and discovering & deep-diving Blackholes of Data” leaps of Humankind.

        8. Michael Elling

          Apple’s success is less from its fabled and deserved design and marketing and more from disrupting 3 vertically integrated industries (music-iPod, communications-iPhone, publishing-iPad). MSFT did it the first time to computing (at the edge). The real question is what will they disrupt next? If nothing, then they are dead money or a debt instrument at best.The thing that could disrupt Apple is a new approach to smartphones, namely the devolution of the current overpriced, bloated and all things to all people platform into a control hub for all the wearables, IoT devices and screens one interacts with, There is a high probability of this in the next ten years; but not this year.

      2. SubstrateUndertow

        By that standard”the sky is going to fall”is a valid prediction 🙂

        1. Richard

          A forecast without a time axis is an opinion

      3. greyenlightenment

        You may be right. I see Apple as just another consumer company that will meet a fate similar to Motorola, nintendo, dell, gopro, garmin, sega, sony, blackberry, etc. Facebook, amazon, and google are much better investments.

        1. Steven Noyes

          I’d fully agree with Facebook but Google has some very serious issues facing it. As CPC continues to decline, they can only increases revenue by simply serving more and more advertisements. People are starting to be really sick of add and content blockers are growing at an alarming rate.FB, on the other hand, is increasing their CPC and serving fewer much more targeted and effective ads. Given Google is a one trick pony revenue wise, I’d be scared of this trend.

      4. jrock_wh

        must be all those record earnings that lead you to believe this.

      5. Susan Rubinsky

        Yup. Apple always was and always will be a visionary-based company. Without the visionary, Apple always fades. They have never found a way to build the DNA into the culture.

  38. Pranay Srinivasan

    One more thought I had was: Large Companies like Airbnb, Uber who expand by territory will experiment with “spinning off” country-wise businesses to “unlock” value to raise funds independently. e.g. Airbnb China / Linkedin China / Uber India.

  39. Thomas Grota

    I agree with #10 (as stated so often this year): investment strategy of unicorn era is coming to an end. as a German #9 will be the funniest thing happen to U.S.: Republicans destroy their chances by electing the guy who is speaking out loud their deepest wishes. Do not agree with #6 HBO will stay with Turner but Netflix will go down badly. #3 regarding Apple is true, however Apple is pushed into hardware and software acquisitions because of that. Yes to #8 Slack and very Yes to #5 on publishers depending on facebook. #7 is wishful thinking especially for Marc A and a16z otherwise they will be hit hard. Lets hope for a good 2016 because their is a lot at stake this year. No room for mistakes this time. Happy New Year Fred and good luck for your portfolio, you gonna need it.

  40. Mike Bestvina

    Do people seriously think Slack is enterprise ready? It only works well for teams (i.e. less than 50), otherwise it’s Chatter/Yammer incarnate. Curious to hear people’s thoughts…

  41. George

    Your thoughts on item 6 could be very telling. The spinoff would really help shift the original theory of cable unbundling, allowing integrated subsystem(s) to compete better on parity with emerging competition (Netflix, Amazon, Apple). Could be a really good move for TWC, legitimate way for an incumbent to fend off competition and transition into a new business model.Really like your thoughts on that and the perceived value in such a move…

  42. Chad Wittman

    Love #6: HBO spinning out of Time Warner.To consumers, HBO is already battling Netflix head-to-head and in many ways already winning. Would love to see HBO Now bring their development back in-house and start more directly competing with Netflix in media technology.

    1. Michael Elling

      Finishing up the holidays in France. Last week we broke down and got Orange/FT broadband, because wireless coverage is terrible and inconsistent in rural areas. O/FT BB is ADSL at 50/20mbs down/up. Pretty impressive for a “rural” area!To celebrate we watched 2 movies over 2 nights. First night was on Netflix after quickly stumbling on Get Low, a great flick. Pulling it up and searching felt like putting a warm set of gloves on. Second night I suggested we watch HBO. What a mistake. Not only was the interface horrible, but the search and discovery was pathetic. Then, when we finally found something we both wanted to watch, it turns out HBO Go doesn’t work in France (even though we were signed in with our cable account). Went back to Netflix and quickly found an old classic Layer Cake before Craig became the most desired secret agent on the planet.Netflix is so far ahead of HBO on the US and global fronts for on demand video it’s laughable. Incumbent and cable services have some of the worst interfaces out there. I can watch any video on any device, pause it, even pick up other videos and come back anywhere, anytime on any device and play that video. No one else (HBO, TNT, CW, etc…) provides that ability.We already know that first impressions are key and simplicity and good UX wins the day. My bet is on Netflix, with the one caveat that they need to get into the live and premium content delivery services (a la carte billing) and work with MNOs to better address pricing for mobile video consumption (same basic concept or metering by the minute instead of flat rate pricing). They are probably working on this as they are consistently 2-3 years ahead of others.

  43. Perry Chance

    Happy New Year Mr. Wilson.

  44. Michael Iacona

    #10 “Employees will realize their options are underwater and will start leaving tech startups in droves.”And where will they go? Larger more established companies? Who is positioned to take advantage of this should it happen?

    1. Matt Zagaja

      It is also possible nobody takes advantage of it and these individuals leave tech to become janitors and uber drivers.

      1. Simone

        employers everywhere complain of a lack of candidates for tech jobs. the real world (where people work who never heard of options) is not much fun, but it is large, no need to enrol with uber just yet. nice comment, why so dramatic on 1st of Jan 🙂

    2. greyenlightenment

      it won’t happen. everyone has been predicting tech bust 2.0 since 2009, and they keep being wrong.

  45. Donna Brewington White

    Thanks for another year of making us think, great fun and bringing us together. You still run the best bar on the web and throw a great party.Happy and Wonderful New Year, Fred!Same to the AVC community! I’m continuously astonished by the group that gathers here, both old and new, regulars and occasionals. Some of you feel like pals and that means a lot to me.

  46. Jon Forrest

    “Time Warner will spin off it’s HBO business” ->”Time Warner will spin off its HBO business”

  47. falicon

    I think the “internet of things” will continue to explode over this next year (a bit related to your #2, but much much bigger than just wearables)…in fact, if anything I think *that’s* probably the true next big phase we’re just starting to enter…everything has a chip, all chips are connected to the cloud, and most are fairly open and programmable…go.

  48. Pierre

    Fred, what do you mean by Slack spam? Isn’t the app sealed off from the rest of the internet? Thanks

    1. Simone

      just finished reading all the comments and someone else asked the same question, so you can find the answer below

  49. Victor Muthoka

    Interesting list. FYI: the blog’s email subscribe function doesn’t work, please fix I subscribe. Thanks.

  50. Akshay Kumar

    On #9 Andy Tanenbaum (of Minix fame) has been running a blog since the 2004 election – the first one to aggregate state polls and track the electoral college every day. He makes some good points. Even if Trump wins the republican nomination conventional wisdom says he get creamed in the national election. (http://www.electoral-vote.c…”In the end, having 35% of the 40% of the voters who are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents still only amounts to 14% of the total vote. This is about what George Wallace got in his independent run in 1968. Wallace appealed to the same demographic as Trump—angry old white men.”

    1. JLM

      .Of course, this completely ignores the reality of the Electoral College but it is a worthy exercise in confirmation bias nonetheless.I sat 10′ from Karl Rove in early Dec and he said, “Trump is re-writing the rule book.”Ask President Jeb Bush and the GOPe, no?It is still a lifetime or two until the election but Trump has been on top longer than any candidate who did not win the nomination.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. Akshay Kumar

        Utter nonsense. It’s not nearly enough to win the general election. He’s alienating large parts of the electorate. What works in the primaries does not typically work in the GE> Forget about everyone else and let’s just look at the punters – you know the guys who actually have their own money on the line. On winning the GOP nomination Trump is 2/1 just slightly being Rubio at 7/4. On outright winning the general election Hilary is 8/11 and Trump 9/2, Rubio 5/1 and Cruz 7/1.If you and your buddy Karl can do better I suggest you put some money where your mouth is. I in fact think he gets crushed in the general election.

        1. JLM

          .Of course at this time in 2008, a candidate named Hillary Clinton was looking like the coronation candidate until a skinny guy named Barack Obama and David Axelrod plus David Plouffe showed up.She ended up 3rd in Iowa and the rest is history. The punters had her the overwhelming favorite. After all, she was married to a former President.Nobody bothered to study the actual 1992, 1996 numbers and see what Ross Perot did for his candidacy. One of the big lies out there is the Bill Clinton box office draw. It is non-existent.You might also check with President Huckabee.Trump is likely #2 in Iowa, at worst, but that is enough. He wins New Hampshire and SC and he is off to the races. Not saying I want this just saying.Your revelation that what works in primaries does not work in the general election is now being taught in middle school. Duh!You run to the ends in the primaries and you return to the center in the general. This is not a revelation and has not been for about 40 years.The significance of Rove’s comment is not so much what Trump can or cannot do but moreso what he (Rove) cannot do. He and the GOPe cannot anoint a member of the establishment, slap them with a checkbook, dress them up, and win the nomination.That is the message and the identification of the messenger is meaningless.As to alienation, a cat may have 9 lives but this Trump cat has about 30 and has only used half thus far. I join in the chorus of folks who thought he would have been banished by now.Unfortunately, the facts do not support either that or your bias. Harken also to the actual 2014 results — biggest schlonging of the Democrats since the 1920s. Everything is going to be fine.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  51. greyenlightenment

    Bitcoin will keep going up. Same for Facebook, Google, and Amazon stock despite large gains in 2015. Valuations for Uber, Airbnb, and Snapchat will keep going up, too, along with Bay Area home prices. Pretty much a repeat of trends as we saw in 2013,2014, and 2015. No bubble burst, no recession . Auto-pilot nation and economy. Just freeze yourself and put your money in Bitcoin, Facebook, Amazon,, and Google stock. Thaw after a decade and you’ll be richer and you won’t have really missed anything either.

  52. greyenlightenment

    Markdown mania will hit the venture capital sector as VC firms follow Fidelity’s lead and start aggressively taking down the valuations in their portfolios.As a vc expert, I’m surprised you don’t realize these markdowns are tax related, not because of reduced investor demand.Crunchbase will start capturing this valuation data and will become a de-facto “yahoo finance” for the startup sector. Employees will realize their options are underwater and will start leaving tech startups in droves.You’re kinda being sensationalist here. I don’t see any of that happening, except for the low-quality unicorns like jawbone and fitbit.

    1. JLM

      .Revaluing or “marking to market” is not a current taxable loss. It may be a GAAP charge — depending on the assumptions used (“impairment” of value/goodwill as an example) but it is not a tax charge.No differently than an investor does not pay taxes on unrealized gains when the market moves in the upward direction.Taxes are only paid on realized gains or losses that have been “constructively received.”If an investment is abandoned and written off, it has to be formally liquidated to avail an investor of the lost investment value.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

      1. greyenlightenment

        It’s not even “marking to market” because shares never actually changed hands at the reduced value . It’s like they arbitrary just marked it down, which I’m guessing there is some ulterior motive. Maybe Fidelity hopes the reduced price will spur holders to sell their Snapchat to them to avoid going underwater.

        1. JLM

          .Not sure exactly what you’re getting at.Marketing an asset to market is never an exercise in an asset changing hands.When an asset changes hands, that is a sale and the accounting treatment and valuation are dead certain.Some funds may elect to hold assets as “investment in partnership” which is held at cost but have a crib sheet which “marks to market” the assets.In this instance — not for either GAAP or tax — they are just taking a look at some future estimated realizable value and nothing more.These are typically very private valuations as the assets are very difficult to evaluate. Partners in a firm may have enormous ranges of value and disagree.There is some data to base valuations on — such as subsequent funding valuations — but these are very suspect and are not valuations for liquidation purposes.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

        2. Ellie Kesselman

          What do you mean by this?Fidelity hopes the reduced price will spur holders to sell their Snapchat to them to avoid going underwater.Why would Fidelity need to own Snapchat stock in order to keep from going bankrupt? I don’t even begin to understand your point.

  53. sigmaalgebra

    SummaryYes, I believe that Trump will win the nomination. E.g., not even the GPOe really would prefer that Hillary win instead of Trump.Once Trump has the nomination, the Republican Party will back Trump if only to help keep control of the House and Senate.Net, IMHO, Trump will beat Hillary. I can easily believe a landslide.For: 9. Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee and he will attack the tech sector for its support of immigrant labor. As a result the tech sector will line up behind Hillary Clinton who will be elected the first woman President. Trump in Broad Terms.After Trump announced, a lot of media pundits had fun getting a lot of eyeballs saying that Trump had no chance. Whether they knew it or not, what they said was wrong. There is now strong evidence that Trump is a strong, smart cookie. E.g., Trump has poll numbers that, from the pundit remarks, would have to be regarded as unbelievable. And, good poll numbers do tend to mean good vote numbers — all other things equal, much better to be way ahead in the polls.Trump PlanningIt’s getting clear that what Trump has achieved so far is what he planned to do. IMHO — he has plans, some that we have seen and some that likely we have not yet seen but that lead all the way to the Oval Office.There is a lot of evidence that Trump has planned his campaign well; Trump is quite familiar with tough legal battles; from that planning and familiarity, I have to assume that Trump has legal guns lined up to fight against voter fraud by opponents.Note: On Trump’s planning, he made a bet, with upside, maybe huge upside, but clearly essentially no downside at all (smart cookie). How: He called for a temporary ban on all Muslim immigration. That statement got him a lot of attention and otherwise is just sitting there and just will never really go away.For the upside: With some quite high probability, somewhere over the next 10 months there will be another headline of an attack — in the US, England, Scandinavia, Canada, Europe, Russia, Asia, Australia, somewhere — by radical Islamic Jihadism, by yet another Akbar abu Fatwah ali Jihad bin Boom Boom. Then Trump’s statement will look good, prescient, smart, like good leadership, like good for US security. If the attack is significantly bad, in the US, by immigrants during the next 10 months, then we’re talking landslide for Trump.A Fact of LifeTo elect Hillary, in the end, at the ballot boxes, need people to vote for her more than Trump. I don’t believe they will.Although Trump has yet to do much against Hillary, from his effective planning so far we have to suspect that Trump also has some strong plans to compete one on one with Hillary.From Trump, Hillary is in line for shock and awe.The Democrats NowThe Democrats have long had a huge advantage in the liberal media, e.g., NYT, WaPo, CBS, and CNN. Maybe there isn’t much Trump can do about the totally in the tank NYT or WaPo, but, for TV, Trump has a huge advantage: TV is desperate for eyeballs, and Trump can provide those.Trump has shown that he knows how to use the TV desperation to get treated “fair” and, thus, blunt much of the media liberal bias. E.g., Megan Kelly hasn’t had a lot of eyeballs from air time with Trump; Trump made an example out of her. Trump is effectively intimidating a lot of media personalities who would, otherwise, like to join a big mob against Trump — easy for the media, each day just repeat the chant of the mob. Trump is breaking up the mob. IMHO Trump fully expected what the media would try to do, planned an effective response, and executed his plan successfully. Smart cookie.It’s easy in NYC to believe that the Democrat party has some real power from really dedicated party members, but recently, no: E.g., now the Republicans have majorities in both houses of Congress.Net, now Trump and the Republicans are in line to beat Hillary, the Democrats, and the liberal media.The Tech SectorBroadly, for “the tech sector” and immigration, the illegal immigration is, in a word, illegal. That Obama has refused to enforce the laws is just something, for whatever reasons, he has been able to get away with.Still, as I mentioned, illegal immigration is illegal. A lot of people see the illegal part and are not happy with it.Net, Trump can oppose illegal immigration and support legal immigration, as he has, and no one can go public with a strong statement otherwise.Keeping in mind my remarks above on A Fact of Life about the crucial importance of votes, for “the tech sector”, let’s look at sources of “tech sector” voters who might want to vote against Trump’s immigration statements and for Hillary; eight points:(1) Only a tiny fraction of recent immigrants can legally vote. E.g., illegals and H1-Bs can’t legally vote. And for illegal voting, note my remark above in Trump Planning on Trump’s abilities in legal fights.(2) Trump has pleased a lot of US voters claiming that immigrants are taking our jobs. A lot of those voters are traditional Democrat voters, e.g., blue collar and union workers.(3) “The tech sector” is not a registered voter and can’t vote.(4) The total number of tech sector executives, investors, stockholders, etc. that are legal voters is tiny.(5) Actually, traditionally executives, investors, stockholders vote Republican.(6) The fruit picking sector may like illegal immigrants, but, really, those aren’t the immigrants “the tech sector” is looking for.(7) Some of “the tech sector” wants more H1-Bs, but they can’t vote.(8) For the legal immigrants that could become US citizens and vote that “the tech sector” might want, e.g., star grads of Stanford, MIT, and CMU, Trump is much more in favor of those than the Democrats have been.Net, Trump’s statements on immigration stand to win him votes, not cost him votes, from “the tech sector”.For “the tech sector” and campaign funding, two points:(1) Those executives, etc. can donate money to Hillary, but Trump will scream that she has been bought, and that will influence a lot of voters.(2) And Trump can outspend the Democrats: First, he has his own funds. Second, IIRC, Trump said that after the nomination he will accept campaign funding from the Republican Party.Democrat Dirt under the CarpetAlso, now, after eight years of Obama, a lot of people are like the character Harry Stamper in the movie Armageddon (1998), “You’ve seen me pissed. … This way beyond pissed.” and, thus, don’t want to vote for Hillary.In particular, IMHO, in the next 10 months there will be a lot of dirt coming out about Obama that will piss off a lot of otherwise loyal Democrats, e.g., the White House getting information from the NSA spying on Netanyahu and Congress over the Iran deal as inhttp://www.wsj.com/articles…IMHO, a lot of the dirt will be much worse than that.HillaryHillary is not really in this election to win. Instead she is trying to be a feminist and to lose and, thus, show that she has been a victim.Generally, Hillary is just not a very attractive candidate.In more detail, Hillary is highly vulnerable in many ways.Some of those ways are her being Secretary of State in the Obama Administration and its opposition to Assad in Syria and Gaddafi in Libya and its Iran deal.And the rest of Obama’s fumbling with ISIS, e.g., “JV” and, right before the Paris attack, “contained”, the success of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the rise of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and the statements in response to the attacks by radical Islamic Jihadism, stand to hurt both the Democrats and Hillary.Also, some of the dirt I mentioned above in Democrat Dirt under the Carpet will hurt Hillary’s chances.ObservationMostly the people who win the White House look like, walk like, talk like a mainstream politician well regarded by one of the two major parties and, hopefully, liked by the liberal media.Trump is not such a candidate.So, from his tactics and poll results so far, what Trump is doing is exceptional and necessarily rare.To evaluate the chances of something exceptional, have to look carefully and in detail and be ready to understand some things that are exceptional and, thus, maybe not easy to understand.I.e., if what Trump has been doing was easy to do, then it would not be so rare.In such exceptional accomplishments, expect to find some exceptional approaches not easy to understand.Net, before shorting Trump, need to look carefully.

    1. Ellie Kesselman

      Trump has broad support across party lines. The Socialist Workers Party distributes flyers at Trump’s campaign rallies, because their constituents (oppressed blue-collar workers who are US citizens) are better represented by Trump than Hillary. I can provide sources for that, if need be. Trump is increasingly becoming the leader of choice for oppressed white collar technology workers, we who have grown weary of training our low-wage, less-skilled foreign replacements due to the H1-B visa racket.Hillary is brittle, crafty, infirm and tainted by decades of deception. She is not likeable. She is obviously captured by special interests (e.g. hedge funds, defense contractors, who knows who else). Hillary is the Democratic candidate who can most easily be bought, and ranks highly among ALL candidates for that! See for example, these dark money statistics. Trump accepts ZERO! Hillary is awash with dark money https://twitter.com/EllieAs… I don’t think that you and I are alone in these thoughts, @sigmaalgebra despite what people like pmarca believe.

      1. sigmaalgebra

        I agree that Trump’s appeal is quite broad. He can move to the center and pick up a lot of votes there and leave the right with nowhere else to go but vote for Trump. And Trump can pick up votes from the left. That he can get some Bernie votes is surprising, but I can believe it.I haven’t looked at Bernie: He can’t be a totally hopeless wacko and still in the Senate. Still, my impression is that he is a 100% Socialist. Maybe someday we will have to come to the Federal government providing everyone with a basic income and food, shelter, clothing, transportation, medical care, and education, but we are not there yet in either need or ability. Maybe when the robots make a lot more progress — tax the robots to support the humans.Trump is not really the loose cannon and wild man he might have looked like. Instead he has been planning carefully. His positions and statements have been carefully considered to get him the votes, the middle of the road, all of the right side that votes, and a lot of the left side.I agree with Fred that Trump will get the nomination. And I agree with JLM that Hillary will lose. So, I will conclude something that neither Fred nor JLM will say — Trump will win.I know; I know; I know, Trump’s chances of winning are slim. Nate Silver says so. So, so, so, he’s just not going to win. I mean, the chances are so much against him, Etc. Maybe this time last year, knowing nothing more about Trump than his casinos and known as “The Donald” in NYC, maybe so. But this is not a year ago.”But a lot of people led early on but didn’t win.” Well, we could use that to make an estimate of Trump winning, but to do that we’d need an assumption of what is called independent and identically distributed, and that’s not the case for Trump. In addition, for a still better estimate, we need to use the other information we have, and again Trump looks different so that the old collection of early leaders who lost is not very relevant. Sure, home runs are rare, too, but get one right along. Trump is exceptional — so, he is one step into being exceptionally good.Nate Silver is correct, except two really simple points: First, add up the estimates of the chances of all the candidates, and the total must be 100%. So, if Nate Silver keeps saying that Trump’s chances are only 10%, then Silver has a tough time coming up with the other 90% needed to add to 100%. Second, either someone beats Trump, or Trump wins. Okay, who’s going to beat Trump? Can’t just say “none of the above” or “no one”, and can’t say a dark horse candidate riding down from the hills. Instead, we know essentially all the possibilities. So, of those, who’s going to beat Trump? We need a name, an actual name, that seems to have a chance, even a small chance. Where’s the name? That’s the candidate “who has no name”? Not good enough.

        1. Lawrence Brass

          “tax the robots to support the humans.”I hope to live long enough to wear that T shirt.

        2. SubstrateUndertow

          he is a 100% SocialistWhat the hell does that even mean ! ! !”Maybe someday we will have to come to the Federal government providing everyone with a basic” everythingIt is not a binary all or nothing affair !The whole left/right polemic is completely irrelevant under network conditions.Adaptive interdependence is the new networked-reality baseline framing.Our contemporary political narratives/metaphors challenge is to frame the tipping-point optimization-opportunities between public/private and individual/collective stakeholders in adaptive network dependency terms.Algorithmic network-effect synchronized-everything is the new causal necessity substrate.Talking in right/left polemics is like trying to create plastics using the language/metaphors of earth, wind, fire, water instead of moving on to the language of atomic-table valences.The network-effect, by its very nature, force-feeds distributive interdependencies at all levels of social/economic governance ?The network-effect – you can run but you cannot hide 🙂

  54. tsts

    Fred: “I sat next to a life sciences investor at a dinner a couple months ago who told me cancer will be a curable disease within the next decade.”Hmm, actually, I find that to be the least likely of all the claims, because of its generality. There are many cancers, and some of them have been curable for decades, while others are still almost always deadly. We have made a lot of progress on various forms of cancer, and will continue to do so, but I am skeptical of any claims of a general solution to “cancer”, as if it were a single disease. (I am an absolute non-expert, though.)

    1. Susan Rubinsky

      People have been saying cancer will be cured in the next ten years for the last 50 years.

  55. Lawrence Brass

    Happy new year and best wishes to you Fred and to all the nice people here at AVC.Great year end posts.

  56. Pete Griffiths

    I suspect the problems with Oculus VR may be more subtle than just being reluctance to put on a headset. Avoiding nausea is tricky and circumscribes game design.

    1. Susan Rubinsky

      That is exactly the first thing that came to mind for me. I don’t even like watching 3-d films due to how nauseous they make me feel. Yet, I can easily jump on a roller coaster and have the time of my life.Though Fred’s mention of more subtle implementation hints at the nausea problem.The second thing that jumped into my mind was VR for physical activity. For example, I spin at the gym in the Winter because it’s too cold (and often too icy) to cycle outside on the roads. Imagine being able to spin using VR where the outside experience can be replicated. For example, an early Autumn day cycling through Cape Cod on the rail trail. That’s dreamy to me.

  57. Milana CB

    Happy New Year Fred & friends, we’re here to learn from great people, new start up ,

  58. Aronado

    Good stuff! So action item #1, purchase HBO stock 🙂 An interesting thing occurs to me while the world seems enthralled with autonomous vehicles and such, I have a sense that physical mobility may be less important than “perceived mobility” which will be achieved via VR. Not hearing so much on the world we’ll live in where we are content with the virtual realities we can conceive. Seems we’ll have the ability to “be” anywhere we want without actually “going” anywhere. thoughts?

  59. Kashif

    If Hillary becomes the President then God save America. But as you predicted Trump to be her opponent, I guess it is the choice between devil and deep sea.

  60. psiberaktiv

    You missed out:1) 2016 is when Linux will finally go mainstream on the Desktop2) Nuke Dukem 3D VR will be first Oculus game hit3) Mark Cuban’s CyberDust will overtake Snapchat and Whatsapp as #1 messenger4) “Slack Zero” will replace “Inbox Zero”5) Apple’s App Store servers shutdown because someone forgot to renew the digital certs in Cupertino6) Microsoft sells Bing to Baidu and exits search7) Microsft buys Yahoo as it bets big on human curated Internet directories8) Google launches Android Drive open source self-driving Car OS. First licensees are the Chinese Auto makers. Early Android Drive car buyers complain that the drive is not buttery smooth with intermittent mysterious slows downs. Drive-by virus infection from other Android Drive autos also a major problem9) Apple launches their electric self-driving car, the Apple Cart. Buttery Smooth performance, but battery compartment sealed and can only be replaced at the Genius Bar. 10) Mercedes, Audi and BMW band together to form their own self-driving Car OS, called Symbian Auto.11) Microsoft also launches their own Car OS as part of Windows 11 Universal release. Windows 11 will work on Mobile, PC and Autonomous Car Platforms. Nobody gives a damn.12) Apple ratchets their exec team diversity ratios even higher by hiring a slightly tanned Sicilian13) Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos get into an intense competition to launch first private Mars expedition. Amazon offers Mars rock pre-orders. Amazon Prime subscribers also get first dibs to bid for the lost British Beagle 2 Mars lander14) Alibaba’s AliCloud offers cheaper than AWS pricing for their Cloud services, with NSA snoop proof guarantee. Cheapest tier Cloud uses hyper scale Chinese Loongson MIPS clone servers with Red Flag Linux15) Trump wins the republican nomination but loses the presidential bid. Trades in his current wife for an upgraded Slovenian supermodel 45 years his junior, to help heal his pain16) Idiocracy 2: The Movie is released. Movie viewed as being too staid and believable as current reality in the US is more crazier17) ISIS group almost on the verge of being annihilated by Putin and the Russian Army. CIA secretly provides Stinger missiles to ISIS rebels to hedge their bets.18) Samsung sues Xiaomi for copying the design of their Galaxy phones in US courts. Apple files Amicus brief19) Huawei becomes bestselling smartphone in China with Apple #2. Xiaomi diversifies into Hoverboards and bread makers as demand for their smartphone plunges20) Jeff Bezos finally kills the Fire Phone after buying over Microsoft’s smartphone division. Learns his lesson that a forked Android is even more shittier than the originalI think my predictions are a lot more believable than Fred Wilson’s. Hey Fred, how’s that decision to offload AAPL shares at $96 pre-split working out for you?

  61. Aashay Mody

    Happy New Year Fred!Would love to know how you would elaborate on #2 and why you are bullish on earables/hearables. Are there any particular startups that come to mind in the space?

  62. noslacky

    Does anyone outside of Bay area and NY use Slack? We used it and dumped it after 1 week.

  63. guest1

    My thoughts on Apple Watch.My first smartphone was probably in 2012 – an entry level phone. Just used it for testing apps.Started using an Android smartphone in 2014 :)First iPhone in 2015 :)Currently use both Android and iPhone – different numbersHave not used a watch in 22 years – since starting college.Bought an Apple Watch – use it a lot. I _suspect_ it will be a silent hit.

  64. Abdelkrim Boujraf

    #2 We will see a new form of wearables take off in 2016…..If I had to guess, I would bet on something we wear in or on our ears.Friends based in Brussels, Belgium did not reach their kickstart goal and deliver a wireless in-ear headphones with smart features : http://kck.st/1R8EZQhYour message may be a booster for a second versionHappy New Year!

  65. Steven Noyes

    When it comes to tech and Apple, Fred is clueless. He is batting 100% wrong for nearly a decade. How did that 2009 stock dump go?

  66. Zain Abiddin

    Would love to learn about your tips on how you are able to blog consistently every single day!P.S. Honor meeting you in 2015 at Launch!

  67. Mel Gross

    You are right, some of your predictions, as always, are ridiculous. How has Apple had a bad year in 2o15? Yes, the stock didn’t do well, but the company’s sales and profits sure did. There is no real reason to expect they won’t have a good 2016 as well.Bitcoin taking off? We’ve read that since it began. I imagine that it will have as good an 2016 as it had a 2015, which is to say, not a very good year. Presently, the main way Bitcoin stays in the news is from all of the scandals that surround it. Bitcoin banks and clearing agencies cheating their customers, black internet organizations using it for criminal purposes, and then getting shut down by governments because Bitcoin and the black Internet are both far less secure than people are told.Slack? Oh well, what can anyone possibly say about that prediction?

  68. John Q. Smith

    Fred if you keep saying Apple will fail it’s bound to happen one of these years…at least you are consistently wrong. However, if you are wrong for a decade and Apple does falter in 2016, do you still take credit once it happens as you have cried wolf for years now.

  69. Jonathan

    Happy New Year and thank you for this set of bordering ridiculous predictions…2-3 of them more than others. Here’s to another crazy year of technology innovations and folly. 🙂

  70. Chuck Russell

    How does Open Bazaar, using only Bitcoin, not devolve into the Silk Road V2.?

  71. the build

    I predicted it would be google on my predictions/forecast (regarding #3). great list, fred.

  72. Harri Manninen

    Fred – HBO has been running a pilot in the Nordic countries (Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark) since 2012 (hbonordic.com), offering the whole HBO catalogue of series, documentaries and also selected series from Showtime/Starz/FX for a flat monthly fee of 9,99€. Available for PC, iOS, Android, Smart TV’s, game consoles etc. Absolutely amazing service, been a subscriber since they launched. Happy New Year!

  73. moeadham

    #6 – NetFlix vs. HBO would be really exciting. Could this be the start of the unbundling of the “Big Six” studios, to be replaced by data-driven, tech-friendly combattants?

  74. William Reynish

    Fred Wilson is a clueless idiot. Saying that Apple had a bad year in 2015 when they released a myriad of highly successful new products and on the way got to completely own the wearables market. The Apple Watch alone is now 1/3rd the size of the entire Swiss watch industry, less than a year in. He is one of those people that are down on Apple, even when they are beating everyone else.

  75. Craig Jacobs

    http://fortune.com/2011/04/…Still stings, huh? Just becasue Gizmodo thinks everything Apple introduced sucked doesn’t make it so. Did Apple have a tremendous awesome new products year? No. It was pretty average for Apple, but it was in no way bad…

  76. Rick Wingender

    So, if #9 becomes true, then you’re saying it’s the End of the World As We Know It, and we should all commit suicide? Seriously Fred, I disagree about Trump going after tech sector immigrants. Low-value illegal immigration is not the same thing as high-value technical people. C’mon Fred.

  77. Ray Youssef

    OpenBazaar will be a killer app. It will take time however as the crypto distribution must catchup. Since most of these items won’t be impulse buys Coinbase and Circle will work well but for the impulse shoppers they will need something faster. Impulse buyers will be bigger in OB because of the fact that vendors must be online. Peer to peer marketplaces will pick up the slack.A lingering question is if Bitcoin can handle the increased transaction count. Right now my company does 5% of all btc transactions by raw numbers and our merchants are processing many small quantities at higher transaction volume. These merchants have already hit the BTC block limit and are pondering litecoin etc.. Introducing a new alt means that the distribution networks will also have to grow. Options are good but bitcoin losing momentum to other alts will set back crypto in general.All up for debate but one thing is clear. Business needs must drive development not vice versa

  78. Macleod Sawyer

    I disagree on #9, Trump will get the nomination, and will lose to Bernie Sanders in the general.

  79. Etash

    Fred, thought-provoking post. One other musing that should be noted is regulation vs tech (e.g. fantasy sports, driverless cars, on-demand everything, cryptocurrency etc) coming to a head.

  80. koolhead17

    shouts: Blockchain, Blackchain, Blockchain[goes back to work]

  81. Mark Gavagan

    RE: #3 One of the big four (apple, google, facebook, microsoft) will fail – here’s a link to a Year-to-date Google Finance chart of stock performance, with all four on at once:https://www.google.com/fina…(you may need to click “YTD” in the graph to see all four – not sure why)

  82. Steven Kane

    so, whichever candidate gets the tech community support wins the oval office? certainly was a big factor for president obama. not so much presidents kerry and gore. i’m not convinced the tech community is a monolithic voting or finance block. seems to be fairly split between center right and center left, at least at the top of the financial pyramid?

  83. Vaultoro

    The bitcoin gold market took off with us launching the first true real time orderbook and API with vaultoro.com .In 2016 we will see proliferation of gold enabling people hedge the bitcoin volatility with a store of value that is not based on debt and legally owned by the user when in storage, not like money in banks. We enable Open Bazaar merchants to hedge the volatility of bitcoin bank independently.

  84. neversummerpb

    I don’t know about 1, 3 & 8. 4 would be a disaster in the making if not tightly controlled. Absolutely right-on with the others!

  85. earld

    good thing you sold your apple stock…

  86. AutisticSanta

    #9 fuck her.

  87. John Gabbert

    It will definitely be interesting to see what happens to private companies’ valuations in 2016, however we should be careful in judging startups solely off of mutual fund pricings. In fact, PitchBook recently wrote an article surrounding this topic, http://s.pitchbook.com/1Hb8… I encourage you to check it out—oh, and to reach out to PitchBook for valuations data…because we’re the only ones who have it.

  88. Kenny Fraser

    Happy New Year and thanks Fred. Most of these types of article don’t appeal but I like this one. No doubt the unexpected will also be added to the list!

  89. Cuenta De Inscripcion

    3 – Amazing! Coming from the guy that sold his apple stock at 13$ and the stock kept going up until over 130$ and he consistently insisted for 10 years that apple would falter! Just like Adnaan Ahmad, the the moron that got fired from Berenberg for consistently advising his clients to sell apple stock and the bank and clients lost billions … for over several years, Fred, stop being the next moron of the year, you have no clue about Apple and tech, look at your other moronic prediction with Bitcoin, you are lost and hopelessFocus on politics, you have a better chance

  90. R. Brad Kirn

    Mattress startups will continue to pop up EVERYWHERE

  91. Patrick Mathieson

    Nice post Fred.

  92. connor

    noice

  93. Neeraj Sahgal

    Drones are certainly here to stay and make life easy in how versatile and efficient they are, and they much appeal to the new gen that wants to embrace tech.Surely battery packs will turn forty times more powerful, yet compacter, that’s when you could be flying to work in your drone.

  94. creative group

    JLM:again if facts don’t suit either party we are accused of supporting the other. An equal dislike for anyone destroying the U.S. There is definitely a lesser of two evils. Heard very loud and clear each time we roll our eyes at some concocted non factual.https://www.google.com/imgr

  95. pointsnfigures

    It is a volatile electorate on both sides. I think we will elect a Hispanic president in 2016.

  96. Rohan

    I agree on the watch. I’m still not sure we can call it a failure…

  97. LE

    But the Watch, which I will likely never, ever buyWhy is that? (ie never ever pretty strong…)

  98. Dan

    After being criticized, Fred clarified that he meant the watch would be successful, but not by Apple’s standards. My observation is this: in Silicon Valley the watch seemed to have a slow start this summer, but over time I saw more and more people wearing one.Emily Chang on Bloomberg wore it for a couple weeks and returned to an analog watch — one of her guests asked where it was? She said it was charging. Haven’t seen her wear it since. My point with that one anecdote is she covers technology, so imagine all of those who sock-drawered the watch aside from her.What happens when watch v2 comes out? The watch may have sold, but is there really a secondary market for a watch that costs $300+? Will people be eager to trade up? If you look at Tesla Model S which was also a first gen product, it had a strong secondary market despite Tesla developing a much better car with autopilot features.At the end of the day, it comes down to how people use it. According to Ben Evans, the use case is limited to checking notifications from time to time and other incidental usage. He likes it. But it seems hard to justify such a great piece of engineering for such trivial use cases. Perhaps Fred’s (and recently Marc Andreesen tweeted about this) concept of an ear piece is more likely to dominate in the notification space. The watch is a novelty.

  99. Dan

    I replied to this and Disqus thinks the reply is spam. Great job creating a friendly environment for engagement Disqus! Sigh…

  100. Richard

    I bought an apple watch this month. What blew me away was the just how Un-watch like it felt on the wrist. Watches have always bugged me in the past. Prediction, every dr, dds, rn wears this watch in the near future

  101. LE

    I haven’t worn a watch since college so I am not a watch wearer and hate arbitrary added complexity [1].As I’ve mentioned I found several features that are “near killer apps” that make me wear the watch everyday. One of them is the ability to set an alarm right on my wrist by speaking. “set alarm for 3:15pm label “go to store”. Or “set alarm in 15 minutes”. Another is the ability to see texts right on the wrist or see who is calling you when your phone isn’t closeby (like when you go to the indisposal room for example). Another is being able to talk to “mom” [2] while walking around the office and doing other things.[1] I was dressing the same way everyday before Jobs was famous for doing that for simplicity (as I am sure many people do).[2] Where “mom” is anyone that you don’t need to pay full attention to.

  102. LE

    Also you can reply to texts from the wrist by speaking and then send the text either as text or as a recording. That’s is super helpful actually for a quick reply so no typing required and you don’t need your phone in your hand. And this is v1.