Dated predictions 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.
Prediction Held up
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.”
Prediction Held up
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.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
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.”
Prediction Held up
David Sacks: Seed-stage startup mortality rate will reach roughly 80%
“Well, I would say that the mortality rate on seed right now is very high. You know, I think it's probably going to be like, 80%.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Cassidy: Justworks has an imminent IPO coming
“I mean, obviously Robert's got an IPO, imminent IPO at some level for JustWorks coming.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Cabane: ChatGPT will drive 25% to 33% of traffic in nine months
“I believe we're going to a webless world. I believe GPT is going to be like a quarter to a third of the traffic and nine months from now, right?”
Prediction Held up
Lemkin: Digital AI sales engineers will soon join live sales calls
“I think A digital SE like this is Brian Halligan's digital one on Delphi is going to come to the zooms. The human it's a person is going to be there. And I brought this up and Dara said, give me another release and this will be full duplex. Like my AI and Bria…”
Prediction Held up
Choi: Public markets will likely value SaaS IPOs at 7x–11x ARR
“And you'll see that companies are trading between this seven times to 10, 11 times range, with the exception of 20 20 and 21. And this is also important to note because irrespective of what private markets are valuing you at today, public markets are still lik…”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lerutte: Artisan plans to automate campaign pitch ingestion by year-end
“I do know Jasper from artisan says that's coming by end of year, but right now you just put it in yourself, you know, pick the best pain points, improve points.”
Prediction Partly held up
Lemkin: AI presentation platform Gamma will reach $80 million in revenue in 2024
“We read about gamma and we love gamma for AI presentations, one to eighty million that we'll do this year, but it was founded in 20, 20. So it was five years to one and then one to 80 this year.”
Prediction Held up
Lemkin: ElevenLabs will reach $300 million in revenue this year
“The tools are either so disruptive, like a cursor or replica or lovable or 11 labs will go from like almost nothing to three hundred million this year.”
Prediction Held up
Benioff: Salesforce Will Demonstrate AI Agents Integrating Into Physical Robots
“And that fourth layer is going to be the robotic layer, but it needs the other three layers to operate because the agents are going to get manifested into these robots. So that will be a keep next step. And we'll see that by dream force. I'm sure.”
Prediction Partly held up
Lemkin: Greenhouse will probably IPO in two years
“Fourth one is Greenhouse, which is over there, ok? They're doing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars, and will probably IPO in two years.”
Prediction Held up
Cabane: LinkedIn removed intent data ahead of a major AI product launch
“You've got to wonder what they're doing, especially because they've removed their intent data product three weeks ago, right? So you've got to wonder, is it because they don't care, or is it because they're going to announce something big? I think the latter.”
Prediction Held up
Pepper: VC fund deployment cycles will normalize back to 2-3 years
“In the last two or three fund cycles, we were investing each of those funds in one year. I think we're going to see fund cycles normalize back to a two or three year fund cycle.”
Prediction Partly held up
David Sacks: Expect a wave of commercial real estate bankruptcies by 2025
“Yeah, you're gonna see a lot of Siri bankruptcies in the next 18 months.”
Prediction Partly held up
Nahigian: Gorgias aims to automate 50% of merchant interactions within 12 months
“Initially it started to automate seven percent of tickets. It's gotten up to 18% today. They think within the next six to 12 months they'll be able to automate 50% of the back and forth interactions between e-commerce merchants and their end customers.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lemkin: ServiceTitan will probably be the first SaaS IPO of 2024
“I think that'll be the first SAS IPO of 20, 24.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Lemkin: Algolia, Talkdesk, Greenhouse, or SalesLoft will likely IPO in 2024
“We had a panel of Algolia, Talkdisk, Greenhouse, and I think SalesLoft, they're all at two hundred million and at least three of them, I think, will IPO next year.”
Prediction Partly held up
Lemkin: Algolia crossed $200M in revenue and will IPO next year
“Second one, Algolia, worth three billion, doing over two hundred million, we'll IPO next year.”
Prediction Held up
Deeter: Canva and other private cloud companies will cross $1B ARR
“There are private cloud companies that now have line of sight, or in Canva's case and a few others, will be crossing the billion dollar ARR mark while still private.”
Prediction Held up
Lemkin: Klaviyo will be a monster IPO and trade over $10B
“I really think all the VCs are gonna get excited about Klaviyo. It's gonna be a monster IPO. I think it'll trade over to ten billion.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Pepper: SaaS Multiples Will Settle Higher Than May 2022 Levels Within 24 Months
“I happen to be one of the bulls and I'm not calling the bottom. That's not our job to pick the bottom, but my guess is that we do settle out at multiples higher than today over the next. 24 months. And we get back to that being normal as opposed to normal bein…”
Prediction Held up
Deeter: Cloud will become dominant delivery model for all software in 3 years
“And we do believe that within the next three years, cloud will become the dominant delivery model for all of software in this enabled cloud first world.”