7 Bold Predictions from Journey 2017
Today was the Journey conference, the largest annual conference in Israel bringing together startups, investors and service providers for a day of networking and great content. This was my 5th Journey and it is one of the few conferences that I still find value in attending. The final session of the day was moderated by Michael Eisenberg (General Partner at Aleph) and featured some prominent local visionaries who each had the opportunity to make a bold prediction for the next 5 years. Here were the 7 bold predictions:
ROBOTICS
Dor Skuler, CEO of Intuition Robotics:
We will each have multiple robots in our homes, that have engaging personas and communicate naturally with humans… and we will develop relationships with them.
VIRTUAL REALITY & AUGMENTED REALITY
Gigi Levy-Weiss, angel investor and co-founder of NFX Guild:
We will have fully immersive entertainment pods in our homes that not only provide audio and visual stimulation but that use a brain computer interface to provide other sensory feedback that makes us feel as though the virtual experience is real…addiction to these virtual worlds will be a real problem.
Augmented reality will be embedded into wearables, making the world an infinite canvas onto which we can summon data whenever and wherever. This AR experience will be controlled using our voice, eyes and brain.
VENTURE CAPITAL
Tal Barnoach, General Partner of Disruptive:
Early stage funds will keep going, although with less capital, but growth funds will be displaced with other vehicles because entrepreneurs will choose ICOs over VCs.
Guy Horowitz, Partner at Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners:
Half of the people in the room [at Journey] won’t be here in 5 years. Venture capital has not evolved as quickly as entrepreneurs and tech. There will be a new generation of investors with new business models and more data and more AI.
REAL ESTATE
Jonathan Benartzi, Managing Partner at Firstime Ventures:
E-commerce is killing retail. There will be 50% fewer malls in 5 years.
[Note: Dead malls are not new. Did you know there is a website dedicated to defunct malls called DeadMalls.com??? ]
PREDICTIVE INTELLIGENCE
Adi Soffer Teeni, General Manager of Facebook Israel:
In 5 years my husband won’t buy me a purse that I don’t like because machines will be able to accurately model my taste even though I myself can’t describe it in words.
INSURANCE
Daniel Schreiber, CEO & Co-Founder of Lemonade:
Assets that incumbent insurance companies built up are morphing into liabilities. Networks of thousands of brokers are a liability now that carriers can go direct to consumer, and companies that are being built natively as digital and big data driven platforms will have a major structural advantage. Majority of retail insurance brokers won’t have work in 5 years.
BONUS PREDICTION:
David Stark, General Partner at Ground Up Ventures:
3/7 of these predictions will be correct within a 5 year time frame.
How many do you think will come true? Give one clap per each prediction you think will come true in the next 5 years.
