Trends Identified
E-sports
“What’s happened over the last 18-24 months, with the rise of Twitch, there’s a massive global core gaming audience, tens of millions of core to mid-core gamers,” says Natarajan. “That used to be the gaming market. In the past two to three years, suddenly that market multiplied. Now it’s not just the gamers, it’s the audience, people watching [the gamers].” “New product and company opportunities are going to emerge from that,” he adds. “It used to be, Who are the content guys, the large studio publishers? That used to be our investment framework. Now it’s who are the founders building the connective services? …It’s amazing to think about core gaming as a spectator sport, and all the interesting new platforms and services that will support that.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Autonomy
Evans says that when the day comes that cars, buses, and other vehicles no longer need drivers, it’ll be possible to completely re-imagine what those vehicles can be, and—even better—re-imagine the world in which they move. “If you’re building public infrastructure or planning a city, then [long-term planning] absolutely needs to be something that figures into your thinking.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Specialized Artificial Intelligence And Machine Learning
Machine-learning driven automation will lead to a wide range of new business opportunities, Evans says, including many companies focused on single-purpose implementations of AI and automation. As well, he says, automation will provide a massive multiplier effect by being able to do the small tasks that thousands of people could do–like look for patterns in images. Kocher says his firm will continue looking for digital health companies with novel ways to reduce costs and improve outcomes. “We continue to look at things that take economic responsibility for the cost and outcomes of care, and use technology and data to make both of those better and more efficient.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Single-Cell DNA Sequencing
“In our body we have millions of normal cells and then we have the ones that aren’t normal,” Kocher says. “And if you don’t sequence the abnormal ones, you don’t know about the problems. So this notion of being able to do single cells versus just the average of when they break up all the cells in the blood, is an important nuance. That’s going to become an important clinical tool in the future. Today we’re just testing average DNA sequences, so you miss stuff.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Genetics Technologies For Healthcare
“There is absolutely a trend over the next 5 to 10 more years toward more personalized, more data-based, more genetic-based, information being included in your interactions with your provider, whether on a generalized basis or in response to specific disease issues,” Roberts says. “Cancer is one that’s very prominent but there will be other ones that come along, and over time we’ll build up those disease-specific ones into a more holistic look at clinically relevant genetics for patients to talk to their doctors about.” He adds that “the long pole in that tent is actually going to be discoveries in biology to allow us to make those associations [between genetic markers and reactions in the body] well. The puck is not going to be on the DNA sequencing or genetic side of things, it’s going to be ‘OK, what do I do with this knowledge?”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Synthetic Biology In Consumer Products
“One of the unsung heroes of synthetic biology is detergents for washing clothes, which now work well at all different temperatures,” Handelsman says. “You can now use very hot water and still get bright whites. That’s because of all the amazing enzymes that have been evolved and engineered. People are also talking about changing photosynthetic pathways in rice. So the rice loses its resistance to cold but it gains 20% in metabolic efficiency. Given global warming, that might be a good trade-off.”
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Mixed Reality
Clearly, there’s interest in this area, as expressed by the $1.9 billion invested in Magic Leap. But Evans is less inspired by the idea of augmenting our existing world–like digital recipes we can see when we’re at the stove–and more by wearable devices that can see and interpret, what’s going on around us. If such a computer could you who people in front of you are, when you last met them, and how they fit into your life or business, that would be exciting. So would it being able to tell you instantly if a product you’re holding at a store is available cheaper online.
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Cryptocurrency
Bitcoin may get all the ink, but there are plenty of other cryptocurrencies, and more to come. Evans says that the way they enable distributed value storage without needing central authority is valuable at a time when people have lost faith in institutions and seek more control over money without governmental intrusion.
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
Computational Biomedicine
“You hear we’re looking for a cure to cancer, but there will never be a single medicine to cure cancer,” Pande says. “But we already have many drugs for cancer. The problem is people get them too late. You don’t wait until your house is half burned down before you call the fire department.” The answer is technologies that can detect cancer much earlier than ever–at high accuracy and low cost–in a reproducible way. “My vision for cancer is it becomes very boring and routine, like going to the dentist,” Pande says.
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company
New Bio-Utilities
If new technologies made fruits or vegetables last up to three times longer, Pande says, farmers could pick tomatoes at peak ripeness and they’d still taste great when they landed in a supermarket. “You could ship fruits and vegetables to new markets, or to the third world. It’s only possible due to this engineering approach,” he adds.
2018
The Most Important Tech Trends Of 2018, According To Top VCs
Fast Company