How wrong were our 2022 startup predictions? • TechCrunch

What a decade this year has been. While prediction pieces always come with a large asterisk because no one knows literally anything about what may play out in the future — such as massive shocks to large startup sectors — our perspectives about 2022 have aged … interestingly.

Last year, Natasha Mascarenhas, Alex Wilhelm, and Anna Heim spotlighted three different startup theses that may define the coming 12 months. Now, we’re fact-checking how accurate those predictions were, plus what we’d change about our perspectives. We know. Humble.

For an light holiday riff, we’re talking about what happened with the M&A space, open source, and usage-based pricing. Let’s have some fun!

Natasha: Let’s talk about acquisitions

Last year, I predicted that M&A would evolve to include a riskier type of ambition. I cited Twitter’s hunger for a Slack competitor and Nike’s infatuation with NFT collectibles. I even reminded founders that startups need to “stay disciplined even amid a cash-rich environment” instead of “spinning up lukewarm climate and web3 strategies because that’s what they think their cap table wants to hear.” (And that culture and technology are hard to integrate at the same time).