Dated predictions on 44 shows and their status, on one timeline. Left of today: already
assessed. Green held up, red didn't hold up, amber partly. Right: still open; when a dot's date hits, the ledger
checks it again against the public record.
Calacanis: SpaceX will go public at a valuation of $1T or more
“Tesla had to IPO. Now it was a different time. It really barely had any revenue, but same guy running them. It IPO'd at 1.7 billion, which seemed very expensive. 1.7 billion. The sister company will IPO at 1.7 trillion or one trillion.”
Lemkin: AI will enable 20-to-40-person teams to build billion-dollar companies
“If you allow for some outsourcing agencies resources that come and go, I think we will see a bunch of 20, 30, 40 person, billion dollar companies because a core of engineers, a bunch of AIs making, and people are going to be like, you know what, dude, not, I d…”
Lemkin: Elon Musk or xAI Will Sue Apple
“He's incensed, and he's got a lot of money in XAI. I mean, he has, he's the richest man in the world, but he doesn't have unlimited capital, so I think it happens.”
Lemkin: B2B software vendors will bundle AI for free in SMB plans
“Next generation AI for B to B, as you approach true SMB, it's more and more going to be base and included with a limited upsell opportunity.”
Lemkin: Anthropic Will Reach $50B in Revenue in Four Years
“Anthropics revenue is like nothing we've ever seen. Okay. It'll be at fifty billion in less than four years or four years plus or minus.”
Customers Will Pay Higher Prices for Canva as It Becomes Agentic
“Now people are going to start paying more for Canva as Canva gets more gentic with two point O.”
Lemkin: OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI will rush IPOs due to capital pressure
“What all three of those say to me is there's no matter, there's subtle pressure around access to capital. Like they've all got to have an IPO strategy sooner than they'd hoped because Data center, because XAI needs capital, because Anthropic is even worried ab…”
Lemkin: Elon Musk Will Not Settle With OpenAI and Will Win
“They ain't going to settle for that. He's going to go to trial and he's going to win.”
Lemkin: Replit and Lovable will surpass $250M combined ARR
“I would say over, over two 50, but barely.”
Lemkin: Tech companies will absorb $400M per IPO when markets recover
“When the engine revolves, we will absorb four hundred million again per IPO.”
Lemkin: Menlo Ventures will 10x to 15x its investment in Chime
“They said they did the Series B, right? So they did the Series B at 203 hundred. Maybe we can figure it out on the fly. They're going to, this will be a nine. There'll be some dilution. They'll 10 or 15 X their money, right? That'll be a fun returner or more t…”
Lemkin: Venture funding and valuations will never return to 2021 peaks
“For founders, you have to understand that will never lead to a return of 2021. Never.”
Lemkin: Employees joining a $1B unicorn in 2023 will make nothing
“If as an employee, if you join a company with, in, in 2023 with a valuation over a billion as an employee, you're gonna make nothing. It doesn't matter what it sells for, you're gonna make nothing.”
Lemkin: First founder-VC pitch meetings will never happen in person again
“Like the first meetings will never happen in person again, right? Even if you're in San Francisco, you're all in San Francisco, they'll never happen.”
Lemkin: OneStream will IPO at $500M revenue growing 34%
“I mean, the new, the next one's one stream, right? They're gonna IPO at five hundred million in revenue, growing 30 some odd percent, 34%.”
Lemkin: SpaceX IPO will be a dud and will not trade up
“I think the IPO nominally will be a dud. I don't think it will trade up dramatically.”
Lemkin: A $100 billion startup exit will happen within a year
“The big exits will solve it, right? The whizzes and the, I mean, we thought whizz was big. Now we have cursor. Now I'm going to win the bet of a hundred billion dollar exit in the next year.”
Lemkin: Elon Musk will force underwriters to meet SpaceX target IPO valuation
“I think Elon, what Elon said Publicly on X, it ain't going to be two trillion. Maybe he'll change his mind. He said two trillion was too high. So whatever his number is, I think he's going to get it on IPO day. He's going to will it into existence. The underwr…”
Lemkin: US government will block Anthropic indefinitely regardless of court rulings
“The government's going to say you're either going to agree to this or we're going to freeze you out of the US economy. And it doesn't matter what a court says. Because they'll come up with another justification. There'll be another one. There'll be a different…”
Lemkin: Replit V4 will autonomously build software features overnight
“I know on the next release of Replit, not only does it happen because they've built their own set of guard roles, but the agents do it at night. So in the next release of Replit, when you log in the next day, it will have built three to four features for you o…”
Lemkin: Fortune 500 will actively replace human employees with AI by year-end
“By the end of this year, that, that train is going to be so far out of the station that, that these growth numbers will be jaw dropping because we will decide enterprises will the fortune 500 or global 2000 will decide we are replacing humans with AI.”
Lemkin: Most SDRs and qualifying BDRs will be eliminated by 2026
“And I really think most SDRs will die next year, but the meat, and I know we throw around these terms differently. The BDR that sort of smarmily qualifies you that that's going to die. Like we just, there's no need for that with these tools.”
Lemkin: 2026 will mark the end of entry-level sales jobs
“There'll be, this is the year where we will see the end of so many entry-level sales jobs. We still need AEs. We still need people knocking on doors. We do not need two-year-old kids sending emails. Those jobs will disappear.”
Lemkin: 2026 will see one or two trillion-dollar tech IPOs
“The idea that we will have a trillion dollar IPO next year, maybe two, we might have two trillion dollar IPOs”