With just a couple of days left in 2023, there’s no better time to take a moment to reflect on all that’s happened this year. From the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and crypto’s widespread troubles to AI’s ascent amid a volatile fundraising market, there was a lot to talk about this year, and investors and founders sure did share their thoughts freely with us in our surveys.
Of course, some sectors are going to be more pertinent than others going into 2024, so we’ve listed some of our most relevant surveys so founders and investors can head into the new year with all the context needed to make good decisions. We’ve also included some surveys that we feel serve as important reminders of the things that went wrong in 2023.
And if you’re curious about how investors are preparing for 2024, we’ve got you covered with this survey of more than 40 investors.
Alternative protein
The alternative protein sector’s prospects have seemed a bit shaky in the past couple of years, but investors think there is potential for alternative protein to fill a crucial gap in the climate change problem space.
4 investors discuss the next big wave for alternative seafood startups
VCs remain confident alternative protein has a real future despite public-market woes
SVB comes falling down
The crash of Silicon Valley’s darling bank isn’t something anyone in this industry will forget soon. Here’s what investors had to say following the bank’s collapse and the widespread ramifications for the venture capital and startup industry.
3 investors presage the future of startups and VC following SVB’s downfall
5 investors discuss what’s in store for venture debt following SVB’s collapse
The robotics revolution
While the hype around robotics may have eased up, development certainly didn’t slow down in 2023. We got an inside look into the problems and opportunities in robotics today, and what investors believe is in store for the sector in the next few years.
Head in the cloud
The way startups use the cloud has pretty much been set in stone if you believe some of the loudest marketing out there. So, we set out to see what founders thought of the status quo and what they were doing differently in implementing the cloud for their processes.
For startups, how many clouds to use may be the wrong question to ask
Fusion energy and the future of power
With landmark regulation being discussed for fusion energy in 2023, it’s important to get a view of what these advances will mean for the startups building the future of energy on the ground. We spoke to both investors and founders of fusion energy startups to see how much closer we are to running our lives off fusion power.
With $10T on the line, 6 fusion investors explain why they’re all in
7 founders and CEOs discuss fusion power’s most pressing challenges
Future of work
Despite being a couple of years out of the pandemic lockdowns, there’s still uncertainty surrounding the future of work and what the average office day will look like. We spoke to founders about how they’re handling their workforce and the expectations they’re setting.
Building a future in construction
Construction is one of the sectors suffering the most from a lack of skilled labor. We spoke to founders in the U.S. and Europe to get a better idea of how the lack of labor has affected projects and what they’re doing to survive and thrive during a rather rocky period for the industry.
4 founders give us their take on what’s ahead for construction tech
Onboarding AI
AI gathered uncontrollable steam in 2023. How much of it was just hype? How much can AI realistically do at the moment? How many jobs are going to be replaced? Everyone has many questions and the answers often just lead to more questions. We did as deep a dive as we could to gather the complete picture.
10 investors talk about the future of AI and what lies beyond the ChatGPT hype
6 VCs explain how startups can capture and defend market share in the AI era
5 investors on the pros and cons of open source AI business models
Are founder events worth the effort?
Given how busy most founders tend to be, we decided to look into just how worthwhile founder events are. We spoke to founders about the nature of events they attend, how many events they cross out on their calendars and how beneficial they’ve been.
To attend or not to attend: We asked 52 founders whether events are useful or a waste of time
How founders can cut through the noise and find events that are actually worth it
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