Predictions for 2021

Across Startups and Breakthrough Science

This is my first public-facing attempt at this, so please bear with me when it all turns out to be wrong, but here I go:

1. The pace of startup investing and creation will continue to accelerate.
2. Similarly, venture capital funds will continue to raise historic quantities in new funds.
3. This is because distributions will reach record highs for the venture capital asset class as recent IPOs and pending IPOs produce liquidity for LPs.
4. A larger percentage of capital will flow to hard tech and biotech companies. Not only are we seeing a structural shift towards startup investing, but I think the beginning of a structural shift in startup investing away from pure computing to breakthrough science.
5. SPACs are here to stay and terms will continue to grow more investor and company friendly at the expense of sponsors. While there may be a pull-back like at the height of any speculative bubble, SPACs are now firmly established along with IPOs and direct listings as exit paths.
6. Space will become a publicly investable theme with multiple space companies hitting the public markets.
7. Electric aviation companies will also follow suit of electric vehicle companies in tapping the public markets.
8. Not clean tech, but green tech with sensible science and unit economics (unlike the first time around) will thrive with vast funding from the new administration.
9. Telecommunications infrastructure companies to ensure connectivity in a remote-first world will prosper.
10. On-shoring of manufacturing will accelerate with dramatic cost reductions in additive manufacturing and semiconductor technologies in order to simplify supply chains in a post-pandemic world.
11. The explosion of biotech investment will get even larger across longevity, neuroscience, and agriculture.
12. Everyone who wants a vaccine in the US will be able to get one, but the unexpected long-term side effects of the vaccines deployed in the US will turn out to be far worse than most people predicted.
13. Those who want to return to the office will be able to in Q3/Q4 with the economy back to a new normal after widespread vaccinations.
14. Venture capital firms and startups will continue to operate in a primarily remote work environment and outcompete larger companies that insist on returning to the way things were.
15. People will look at 2021 as a better year than 2020, but remember — you decide what your experience of life is. Decide to make both great!

Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in seed-stage companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and agriculture.

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