The Pulse by EllisX: Tech & Business Trends Worth Writing About — Dec 14
It may be the end of the year but the business world has no intention of slowing down. Which means that there are a number of trends we’re noticing that will likely persist and define the future of tech and business in 2021. Here’s what caught our eye in the past week:
Silicon Valley is moving to Austin, TX
Silicon Valley has been prone to unbundling for quite some time, but it took a global pandemic to actually make it happen. While techies have been moving to a variety of places over the last few months, Austin, TX has emerged as the preferred city for tech elites. Scores of tech executives announced they’re moving there over the past week, including Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, ex-Sequoia Partner and current startup founder Amy Sun, and Oracle decided to move its HQ there. Others will likely follow, making Austin the new epicenter of tech talent.
Will Movies Theaters Ever Return?
The pandemic has crushed movie theaters, and any movie that had a theater opening this year massively underdelivered. This is accelerating the shift to streaming, with more and more films being released directly onto streaming services. Last week HBO Max decided to forego theatrical releases in favor of streaming the movies directly on its platform. With the convenience streaming offers and the behavioral shifts that are bound to emerge post-pandemic, movie theaters may not be able to recover.
Entrepreneurship Is on the Rise
This year has sparked a lot of new business creation. While entrepreneurship had been on the decline in the US for the last couple of years, Q3 2020 saw the highest number of new business applications in the last decade. The pandemic-induced recession, coupled with the rise of the passion economy, are empowering more creators to strike off on their own, and fueling small business creation and solopreneurship. With unemployment at 6.7% and more people looking for creative ways to earn an income, we can expect to see a lot more businesses being created in the next year — and a boom of innovation and startups not seen since the last recession.
