Predictions and Insights

2017· Oct 25

“The interactions that were unavoidable in previous times will become special occasions; receiving service and attention from another human will be a luxury. People will need to see and feel that other people are nearby.”

2017· Oct 25

“Silence will become the rarest of things, both desirable and terrifying. Humans will want to tune out of the noise, of the stream of personalized messages telling them what they’re not, but they would also find it difficult to bear the silence, focusing them on what they are.”

2017· Oct 25

“In the future, natural things will be increasingly valuable — materials, light, air, sound, that which is organic to the point of feeling like it hasn’t been designed at all.”

2017· Dec 7

“In 5 years, it’s not unlikely that the world’s best real estate operators will know more about their “users” than any web site ever did.”

2018· Jan 30

“Technology does not revolutionize industries gradually. It waits for a crisis, and then it pounces... A whole new real estate market will emerge from the next one.”

2018· Mar 23

“Cloud-based AI will be critical to many (most?) businesses in 10 years. And a handful of companies will control it.”

2018· Mar 29

“The term "Human Resource Management" is about to take a sinister twist. Employees will be constantly tracked, managed by machines, their lifetime value calculated in advance, and their salary set dynamically based on their behavior.”

2018· Apr 19

“The threat of Artificial Intelligence is not its ability to replace us. It is its ability to manipulate us.”

2018· Jul 12

“More Americans will be renters. And Wall Street will be their landlord. How this might look in hindsight: Big Money steps in to solve a problem, crowds out all other money, becomes a problem in itself.”

2019

“...technological innovation might lead to dramatic growth in economic activity and corporate profits while simultaneously reducing overall demand for office space.”

2019

“the office of the future is not a single location; it is a network of spaces and services.”

2019

“Creative and highly specialized jobs will grow in demand, but they will also grow on demand. Many jobs will not be stable or, more accurately, they will not be jobs at all. Professionals will be called upon to contribute to specific projects and join teams for set periods of time.”

2019

“...companies are starting to resemble networks or ecosystems, rather than clearly defined entities. … Today, technology makes it easier and (often) more profitable to identify, contract, and coordinate a group of ideal professionals for a set period of time.”

2019

“...even within giant companies, there will be fewer large, homogenous teams working together in a single location over long and predictable periods.”

2019

“In the industrial era, machines pushed humans to become more like them—working regular schedules, in specified locations, on clearly defined tasks, using structured inputs to produce structured outputs. Today’s “machines”, on the other hand, are trying to become more like us—learning our languages, adopting our facial expressions, and attempting to think intuitively and creatively.”

2019

“Digital collaboration tools such as Slack, Airtable, G Suite, Virtual Reality hangouts, or good old-fashioned email make it easy for employers to track and quantify employee engagement and communication. They also make it harder for employees to ever stop working.”

2019

“...a bifurcated workforce is one more reason that an average, one-size-fits-all office product is not likely to be in high demand.”

2019

“Tenants don’t want “space”; they want a productivity solution to help them attract and retain the best individuals—and empower those individuals to produce their best work.”

2019

“In a sense, many properties will no longer be assets in themselves, but will serve as inputs and components of other operating businesses.”

2019

“Over the next decade, online channels are likely to spawn a plethora of new retail brands that will end up requiring physical space.”

2019

“Airbnb used apartments to disrupt hotels, but its ultimate impact will be much more disruptive to those who manage apartments than to those who manage hotels.”

2019

“The boundaries between different uses are blurring, with people lodging in apartment buildings, living in hotels, working in restaurants and retail malls, and sleeping or socializing at the office. Disruption of demand for some uses (e.g. retail) creates a glut of inventory that can be repurposed for other uses.”

2019

“Current labor shortages are fueling innovations that might—gradually, then suddenly—make warehouses far less dependent on human employees.”

2019

“For a growing number of employees, flexibility is not just a perk, it’s necessary. … Employees value flexibility because it allows to balance other life goals, it offsets the creeping of work emails and calls into private time, and—most importantly—it gives them a feeling of control over their own lives.”

2019

“...the question is not whether consumers will continue to visit physical spaces to shop, to pick up goods they acquired online, or to experience new things. The question is which companies will capture the value generated in the process.”

2019

“Human work is becoming more conceptual, less structured, and less predictable.”

2019

“Ultimately, large parts of the office market will resemble the hotel industry, where a single asset is often [owned], operated, and branded (and marketed) by three separate entities.”

2019

“...the main impact on how real estate assets are used, operated, and valued will not come from real estate tech. Instead, it will come from innovations that are transforming other industries and changing the way people socialize, move around, eat, and find meaning.”

2019

“Retail landlords are the first to feel the impact of well-capitalized digital competitors, but they are not the last: many of the dynamics that are transforming physical retail have a direct impact on industrial real estate. Similar forces are making their way to office, residential, and lodging.”

2019

“Technology cannot eliminate transaction costs. Reducing friction in one part of the customer journey introduces new friction elsewhere. Eliminating one pain point makes other pains more palpable.”

2019

“Already, a growing number of retail spaces are not used for direct sales. Instead, brands are using stores to acquire and onboard new digital customers, to handle returns and service for goods purchased online, and to increase brand loyalty and engagement with existing customers.”

2019

“The retail giants of the twenty-first century are those who will be able to link these touchpoints into a single ecosystem, serving the customer not just online and offline, but also across different physical assets.”

2019

“Whether or not WeWork survives, the strong demand for its type of offering points to a future in which the value of even the best office assets become less predictable and more dependent on specific operators.”

2019

“Office landlords are facing an unprecedented abundance of supply... it is the result of individuals’ ability—and desire—to work from anywhere.”

2019

“While the newly created jobs pay more in aggregate, their distribution might be bifurcated: A relatively small share of people are earning much more than before, a larger share have less stable and less rewarding gigs, and fewer people overall have access to stable jobs that pay reasonably well.”

2019

“If employees can collaborate across offices, why do they need to be in the office at all?”

2019

“Why should it take 30 seconds to find, pay, and move into an apartment on Sonder or Airbnb while it takes 30 days to find, pay, and move into the same apartment through the traditional residential leasing process? It doesn’t make sense and it won’t last.”

2019

“Technology also played an indirect role in driving demand for rental housing. In particular, it contributed to a robust but volatile job market that makes it difficult for middle-class families to commit to a long-term mortgage.”

2019

“...as we consider how people live, technology’s bigger impact might be on where they live. Technology enables goods and people to move around faster, for much lower costs, and along new paths. It also disrupts employment patterns and work styles, concentrating certain jobs in a few areas while dispersing (or eliminating) others.”

2019

“Contrary to their historical name, many retail stores are no longer places where goods are stored. Instead, they are often a place for customers to engage with a brand ahead or during a sale that technically occurs online and is fulfilled remotely.”

2019

“A building’s visibility is no longer restricted to the offline world. The way an asset looks online has a growing impact on its value.”

2019

“As their operational intensity increases, the financial performance of office, multifamily, and industrial assets might become more correlated with other businesses in the overall economy. The performance of hotel properties, for example, is already more correlated with the overall stock market. A growing correlation with other asset classes will affect real estate’s position as an alternative asset class. Institutional allocations will have to be adjusted to reflect this change.”

2019

“Don’t look only at the interplay of supply and demand; consider the changing nature of demand and the changing definition of supply.”

2019

“...nothing seems to vanish faster than privacy. Ongoing tracking of human activity was initially an online phenomenon, but it is making its way offline. Physical spaces are being filled with new sensors, cameras, and devices that gather unprecedented amounts of data.”

2019· Jan 19

“Humans working for large companies are not known to be great at providing empathy and customer support. Machines are patient and might do it better.”

2019· Oct 7

“China is about to become a bipartisan US campaign issue. And that’s (more) bad news for China. It’s also good news for the world.”

2020· Mar 3

“America is in complete denial about #Covid_19... expect more bad news to come once we catch up to reality.”

2020· Apr 15

“The abundance of new, cheap money will drive even crazier deals and valuations over the next few years – notwithstanding a covid drop in the beginning. Institutional investors will move further up the risk curve to try to regain lost ground.”

2020· May 1

“College towns are an ideal environment for knowledge workers. The Googleplex was inspired by a university campus, and many of our current offices have been inspired by the Googleplex. Empty colleges can become a magnet for companies and their employees.”

2020· May 29

“At some point, entertaining and teaching other humans will no longer be something we do at work; it would be the only work left for us to do. Like McLuhan's horses, we will evolve from being a work animal to being a show animal.”

2020· Jul 3

“Buildings in many traditional employment districts will have to compete more fiercely and many of them will ultimately have to be repurposed.”

2020· Jul 3

“I suspect that the truly dominant class of the 21st Century is only starting to emerge. And as it emerges, it will create a whole new way of living, different from anything we've seen before. I believe that the defining characteristic of this class will not be where it lives, but its ability to live anywhere it wants.”

2020· Jul 10

“The locations we will occupy could become as customized to our taste as the songs on our playlist. This means that the distribution of people and economic activity could — and likely would — become more segregated.”

2020· Jul 17

“The fact that people can work and access services and experiences from anywhere creates an abundance of choices that will alter the distribution of human communities within and between cities.”

2020· Jul 24

“The biggest risk to US cities is not that people or business will move to the suburbs. It is that talented people who would have gone to San Francisco, NYC etc will decide to NOT come to the USA at all.”

2020· Aug 20

“...the main challenge for many office buildings will be in 18-36 months. As soon as they can, most companies will try to get everyone back to the office. The real "fun" will begin once it's time to renew leases or consider expansion.”

2020· Aug 26

“In the future, cities will recruit specific individuals in the same way that they currently recruit large corporation (or the way retail landlords recruit anchor tenants).”

2020· Sep 4

“talent itself will consolidate into new power structures... We'll see Guild-like groups of talented people flexing their economic strength not just against competitors and customers but against whole cities and states.”

2020· Oct 9

“Any profession that could be performed beyond the constraints of time and place will become less safe for the average practitioner and offer higher rewards for superstars.”

2020· Oct 22

“The Scalable Class’s increased productivity will make many of their own colleagues redundant. As blue-collar employees lost their manufacturing jobs once their industries became more productive, white-collar employees will lose theirs.”

2020· Nov 6

“As more of our work is performed online... it is increasingly possible for virtual humans to join the workforce. AI is increasingly good at generating human faces and human ideas, and human speech. A team of talented people can create the ideal lawyer, investment advisor, customer support agent — making him/her/it more attractive to customers.”

2021· Feb 12

“China's illiberal regime and immigration policy make it unattractive and difficult to move to. The same system that enables so much data to be collected makes it much harder to attract the researchers who can make the best use of this data.”

2021· Mar 12

“...to create valuable ideas, machines don't need to make sense, at least not all the time. And they also don't need to know whether their own ideas make sense. That's what humans are for.”

2021· May 13

“There is no longer a ceiling above us to restrict our earning potential. But there is also no floor underneath.”

2021· Jun 14

“Traditional corporate structure will be replaced not just because we can work remotely or on-demand. They will be replaced because both the inputs and outputs required in our economy are becoming more abstract and harder to define, measure, and manage.”

2021· Jul 2

“The company of the future will look like a venture fund, and talent will become a truly investable asset.”

2021· Sep 10

“A16Z is doing the same thing to the venture capital industry. It is not just acting strategically in order to gain an advantage. It is imposing a whole new cost structure on its competitors. As a result, a handful of other firms will try to catch up and become equally giant; a variety of "boutique" angel investors and syndicates will live off relatively small (and absolutely large) crumbs, and many of the big-but-not-big-enough funds that currently exist will disappear or gradually become irrelevant.”

2022· Jan 28

“To sum it up, we're heading to a world in which work is increasingly indistinguishable from leisure, corporations indistinguishable from communities (or group chats), production indistinguishable from consumption, and every person is both an investor and an investment.”

2022· Mar 21

“A weakened yet belligerent Russia, dependent on Beijing, on the edge of Europe. Is this where we’re headed? Basically, Russia as the North Korea of China’s west: A “crazy” neighbor that slips an occasional missile but ultimately does what it’s told.”

2022· Apr 21

“Sanctions (and ensuing inflation) are as likely to cause a regime change in the West as they are in Russia. And elections in Europe and the US are happening sooner… sad but true.”

2022· Jun 17

“The online persona is, in fact, a collection of individual employees across the world: A graphic designer in Croatia, a manager in Miami, a performer in Vladivostok, and a "chatter" in the Philippines. The division of labor — the division of a single individual into multiple people, each performing what they're best at, and each compensated based on the specific value-add they contribute and their relative pricing power.”

2022· Jun 17

“We will remain useful, and our primary use will be entertaining and providing human attention and affection to other people. And we will be paid to do so.”

2022· Jul 15

“Remote work is indeed a perk. And the only reason it will stop being a perk is by becoming a standard — by becoming more common, not less.”

2022· Jul 25

“A remote-heavy economy does not simply function as before and occasionally experiences a very mild adjustment. Instead, a remote-heavy economy is constantly adjusting and operates with fewer constraints. In such an economy, people find and lose jobs more frequently. More likely, many jobs are no longer jobs per se but are actually on-demand projects or gigs.”

2022· Jul 29

“And not just New York, any city that is already large and attractive stands to gain from this dynamic. But these cities will gain only if (1) they build enough housing and infrastructure to absorb this new demand and (2) their countries welcome skilled migrants from anywhere.”

2022· Aug 4

“The biggest threat to your job is not a robot; it's your colleague. Technology will enable more professions to become scalable.”

2022· Sep 7

“...if you give each human a computer, their ultimate output will be power-law distributed. A tiny minority will build a piece of software (or post a video) that makes them a billionaire, a slightly larger minority will leverage their skills to make millions, and most will do very little.”

2022· Oct 21

“Soon enough, social media will be flooded with machine-generated content. Most of it might not be good or appealing, but algorithms will figure out which bits are good and appealing. And as production and curation become integrated, the world will see viral content that is more appealing and more potent than ever.”

2022· Nov 1

“Prosperity is contingent on embracing technologies that make the world too complex to manage or comprehend. But further growth only makes the world harder to govern and more prone to large, unpredictable events.”

2022· Nov 3

“The more new content there is, the more likely we are to consume old content. The same is true for ideas and ideologies.”

2022· Nov 3

“We need to have excellent, free public education ESPECIALLY if machines are going to do all the work. 20th Century: Education helped people work more productively. 21st Century: Education can help people idle more peacefully.”

2022· Nov 4

“China is not only interested in limiting creative destruction domestically but also in expediting creative destruction elsewhere. It assumes that once new products, methods, and preferences are tried and tested, it would be able to choose which ones to adopt and "plant" at home.”

2022· Dec 17

“People are confusing “it’s inherently easier for AI to replace white collar workers” with “AI developers focus on white-collar tasks because these can be solved without dealing with the physical world & offer higher reward than replacing the world’s worst paid workers”.”

2023· Jan 11

“...while Microsoft tries to revive Bing and Google tries to defend search, Facebook might be in the best position to make a lot of money from generative A.I. in the immediate future.”

2023· Feb 3

“...bosses vs. employees is the wrong narrative. The real drive for more flexibility comes from companies themselves and, more broadly, from the changing nature of capitalism. Some bosses get it, and some bosses don't, but the simple reality is that it is no longer possible to plan your workforce and office needs too far in advance.”

2023· Feb 9

“...if AI becomes the "co-pilot" of everything we do, then the market for "search" will grow by 10-100x—leaving plenty of upside for Google and everyone else.”

2023· Mar 27

“Tech skills will continue to be in high demand. But tech jobs will become less safe... When everyone can build software, many average or less creative programmers will suddenly face intense competition.”

2023· Mar 31

“AI will do to software what Instagram and TikTok did to photos and videos. They will enable every crazy person with an idea to launch their own "machine."”

2023· Apr 20

“...artists can no longer appear real on their own. Their voice or style or aura, or charisma is no longer sufficient to prove they are who they claim to be. The artist's essence has been scaled and routinized. This enables artists to earn more than ever before. But it also makes them even more dependent on centralized platforms — not just to distribute their music, but to exist at all.”

2023· May 2

“In addition, we can expect chatbots and other AI agents to become integral parts of the workflow in a growing number of industries. To enable these agents to participate and contribute, work will have to be conducted through digital channels — mediated by software and cloud-based applications.”

2023· May 22

“...one of the incredible things about generative AI is its ability to generate personalized content and digital experiences. These may never be as good as the real thing, but personalization, ease of access, and price might convince a lot of users to stay online rather than fly to Florida.”

2023· May 26

“Can [Nvidia] be worth five trillion in five years? I think it has a decent shot.”

2023· Aug 10

“A massive group of workers in low-wage countries could take up jobs that were previously performed on-site by better-paid employees. This new remote middle class would enjoy rapid income growth as more knowledge work is outsourced and redistributed. This growth will come at the expense of former office-dwellers in developed countries. These former office-dwellers will experience low or even negative income growth.”

2023· Aug 10

“In the future, more of the world's highest earners will be individuals, as opposed to corporate employees. More of them will derive most of their annual income from owning intellectual property rather than active work. And the composition of the top percentile of global owners will become more diverse.”

2023· Sep 18

“Computing resources are scarce, as are energy and space. Once software is better-suited for innovation and creativity, comparative advantage would demand that software focus on that and leave other work to everyone else. Everyone else means us: We'll be able to do the low-value work that software is too busy (or expensive) to worry about.”

2023· Oct 6

“...we can have growth and innovation and happy people, even if inequality would increase. The way to achieve this is not by eliminating inequality (and growth) but by making inequality costless — by ensuring that some people's spectacular success does not hurt other people.”

2023· Dec 8

“As human signals grow in importance, expect humans to get paid for simply being alive and going about their business — not as a form of Universal Basic Income (UBI), but as actual compensation for their contribution to the production of intelligence.”

2024· Sep 25

“As capital and energy replace labor as the economy's main engines, data centers and energy plants replace offices as investors' favorite assets.”

2024· Sep 27

“The purpose of a city... is to lower transaction costs for everyone... To allow people to find whatever they need, ad hoc, on demand, try it; if it works, do more of it; if it doesn't work, do less of it.”

2024· Dec 12

“It’s useful to think of AI as an interface for electricity. We basically discovered a way to turn energy into everything: medicine, management, movies, music, companionship, sex.”

2025· Jan 21

“The only meaningful moat in AI is chips and energy. That’s why Trump will aim to reshape the Middle East through aggressive dealmaking despite no longer needing its oil — to prevent it from falling into China’s hands.”

2025· Mar 11

“We can think of a whole new paradigm, which I'll call general purpose urbanism or GPU, which can have many more cores, so not like a center or a central business district. It allows for parallel experimentation, allowing people to try different things, start new businesses, try different jobs, see whatever other people might find valuable.”