Woops! In the craziness of having an infant, I never got around to grading my 2022 and 2023 predictions, so I’m going to go back and grade 2 years worth at once (and now hopefully have better data on 2022).
First off, grading my predictions for 2022:
- Build Back Still Pretty Good
Grade: Extremely Right
I don’t say this often, but I cam pretty close to nailing this one. As I shared back at the time, Biden’s Build Back Better Reconciliation Policy may be dead for now, but I don’t see it being dead for good. It won’t be $1.75 trillion, but I expect more limited scope legislation of at least $700 billion to pass in the first quarter of the year. So it died a couple times, and didn’t pass until the fall of 2022, but this important legislation ended up including $783 billion in climate and energy spending as part of around $900 billion in overall investments.
2. Boom Times for Instant Delivery
Grade: Wrong
I missed the mark here. I polled my colleagues at the end of the year, expecting at least half of them to have used these instant delivery service; only a couple had, and even then it was for a niche use case (like party snacks or to try it out); none had adopted it as part of their lifestyle. Getir and Gorillas ended up laying off half their staff in the summer of 2022 (although continue to exist) and Buyk shut down altogether. And I haven’t ordered in the last year myself
3. The Tesla Model 3/Y Will Be the Best Selling Car or SUV Platform in the United States
Grade: Right
Tesla sold a total of 421,497 Tesla Model Ys and 3s (which have historically reported sales together)- 225,799 Model Ys (up 40% from the prior year) and 195,698 Model 3s. This easily bests the 366,741 Toyota RAV4s (the next most popular model).
4. Federal Regulation of Tech
Grade: Wrong
Wrong again on national politics — while some states have been more active in considering or implementing tech regulation (especially from social media), nothing has moved federally.
5. The Meta Quest 2 will be the Best Selling Game Console in the US
Grade: Wrong
Totally wrong — the Nintendo Switch was the best selling console, by a large margin. VR headset sales actually shrank in 2022. 2024 should be an interesting year for VR, with Apple’s device launching; meanwhile, Meta’s Quest 3 has come to market, which also means that the Quest 2 is now priced in the range of an impulse purchase ($250), so it’ll be interesting to see what that does for adoption. I… still haven’t tried one.
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So, for 2022, that’s 2 right and 3 wrong. Now onto 2023 grades:
2023 prediction grades:
- The U.S. Government is going to shut down
Grade: Wrong (or maybe just early?)
So many informed observers thought the government was going to shut down late this year, but they kicked the can into the early 2024. So, I still think they’ll have themselves a shutdown then — none of the underlying points of conflict have changed much, and may have actually gotten worse with sagging support for the Ukrainian war amongst Republicans, but it didn’t happen in 2023.
2. The Fed achieves the soft landing it is looking for
Grade: Right
I know Jerome Powell hasn’t officially said they’ve achieved a soft landing, but the zeitgeist is that that’s where we are now — inflation is coming under control, and job growth remains strong (but not too strong). This was probably my most out-of-step prediction, with many forecasts from that time assuming a recession right about now.
3. More SPAC bankruptcies
Grade: Right
WeWork is just one of the numerous well known SPAC companies to declare bankruptcy this year. Turns out it was a bubble! In the vehicles space I called out specifically, Proterra, Bird, and Electric Last Mile Solutions all filed for bankruptcy this year, having previously gone the SPAC route.
4. Office Fridays are toast
Grade: Mostly Right
Chicago has been pretty strong relative to other geographies for return to work over all, but people are not coming in much on Fridays. It’s not actually below 25% occupancy in Chicago as I suggested, but sitting around 31%, compared to almost 70% on Tuesdays (great data courtesy of Kastle, with additional data here). These days, even people who are committed to being fully in-office typically let people work from home on Fridays.
5. Growing support for climate adaptation solutions
Grade: Mostly wrong
While there has been plenty of extreme weather, and more attention to urban flooding and the infrastructure that is required to protect against it, I didn’t see a big surge in investment in companies related to climate adaptation in 2023 after all. There’s always next year!
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So, for 2023, that’s 3 right and 2 wrong. Paired with the 2 right and 3 wrong from 2022, I’m batting exactly .500 — nothing to write home about, except to note how hard it is to make accurate falsifiable predictions on such a short time scale!
