🔮 22 predictions for next year

As New York Yankee great — and American poet — Yogi Berra said: “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”

For that reason, we at The Hustle outsourced our prediction work and read up on dozens of “2022 predictions.” Here are 22 interesting ones for you:

1. Apple will hit a $3T market cap. And Microsoft will achieve the same milestone not long after. (Seeking Alpha)
2. Natural language processing (NLP) will be the hottest funding vertical in the AI industry. (Forbes)
3. Bob Iger returns as Disney CEO… if Disney+ subscribers continue to slow and the stock continues to stumble. (CNBC)
4. Lithium reaches an inflection point. The metal is critical for EV batteries but is environmentally damaging to extract. This will push the industry to find green alternatives. (Kearney)
5. The S&P 500 will rise, with Goldman Sachs predicting a +9% gain for 2022. (Business Insider)
6. Only 10% of firms will go fully remote, with 30% returning to the office and the remainder (60%) struggling to figure out a hybrid model. (Forrester)
7. Global box office will jump to $33.2B (+58% YoY) but the film industry will have to wait until 2023 to reach pre-pandemic levels of $40B+. (Variety)
8. The EU becomes the world’s most important tech referee. While US antitrust bills are stuck in Congress, regulators in the EU and UK will continue to bring antitrust cases against Big Tech. (Casey Newton)
9. Following El Salvador’s lead, other countries in Latin America — such as Panama or Paraguay — could make Bitcoin legal tender. (CoinDesk)
10. Private equity’s new playbook. To unlock value, PE firms will start acquiring companies and make them “remote-first.” (Chris Herd)
11. DAOs are the new SPACs. As a quick-funding vehicle, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) will become as hyped in 2022 as special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) were in 2021. (The Guardian)
12. Influencer marketing takes off. With Apple’s new privacy updates, companies will look to creators to reach their audience. (TechCrunch)
13. Burnout among medical professionals will decline with advances in health care AI. (GE Healthcare)
14. Hot startups that could go public in 2022 include Databricks, Rippling, Stripe, Klarna, Revolut, MasterClass, and more. (Crunchbase News)
15. Inflation expectations remain high for 2022, according to a Bloomberg survey of 47 economists, as the world works through supply chain constraints. (Bloomberg)
16. Apple will acquire a film/TV studio to better compete with its streaming competitors. (CNBC)
17. Cottagecore is the next design trend. The rural aesthetic features “patterned vintage wallpaper, floral upholstery and wood.” (Airbnb)
18. The acute phase of the pandemic will end at some point in 2022, according to Bill Gates. His optimism relies on continued improvements with vaccines and treatments. (Inc Magazine)
19. Passwords will go away as new forms of multifactor authentication (MFA) hit the market. (Government Technology)
20. EV makers make money. Companies like Rivian, Lucid Motors, Lordstown Motors, Canoo, and Fisker will (finally) deliver a meaningful number of cars. (CNBC)
21. Meme stocks are here to stay, as retail traders continue to find stocks to hype up. (The Economist)
22. You will hear the words “Web3” and “metaverse” next year. (The Hustle)

This is a guest post from Morgan Housel, partner at The Collaborative Fund and author of the best-selling book, The Psychology of Money: Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness.

***

The stock market is up big this year. US households now have a collective net worth of $144T, ~2x the level of 8 years ago.

Congrats.

But it’s times like these that we have to remind ourselves that the relationship between money and happiness is complicated.

Rather than assuming wealth is just the amount of money you have, let me propose what I think is the highest form of wealth:

Controlling your time and the ability to wake up and say, “I can do whatever I want today”

Five-year-old Franklin Roosevelt complained that his life was dictated by rules. So his mother gave him a day off — he could do whatever he pleased. Sara Roosevelt wrote in her diary that day: “Quite of his own accord, he went contently back to his routine.”

There’s a difference between working hard because you want to and working hard because someone else told you you had to, and how to do it, and when to do it. Even if you’re doing the same work, the independence of doing it on your own terms changes everything in the same way that sleeping in a tent is fun when you’re camping but miserable when you’re homeless.

Wealth can lead to time independence, but it’s never assured

It can be the opposite, as whatever created the wealth has a claim on your time in equal proportion to its financial reward. A number of CEOs fall into this category: They have an abundance of wealth and not a moment of free time, which is its own form of poverty.

Charlie Munger summed it up: “I did not intend to get rich. I just wanted to get independent.” It’s a wonderful goal, and harder to measure than net worth.

For the millions who love but will never play professional football, John Madden — who sadly passed away Tuesday at 85 — helped build the next best thing.

“John Madden Football” was developed by Electronic Arts in 1988. EA’s creator, Trip Hawkins, was known as “junior Steve Jobs” and was Employee No. 68 at a small startup called Apple Computer.

EA needed a football consultant…

… and Madden — a Super Bowl-winning NFL coach and Emmy-winning broadcaster — was actually the company’s 3rd choice (Joe Montana was the 1st, but he had a deal with Atari).

Madden saw the game’s potential to be used as a tool to learn football, so he signed on.

After a late-1980s launch, Hawkins offered Madden the chance to buy EA stock — pre IPO. But Madden turned him down.

Oops

“That was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life,” Madden said. Today, EA has a market cap of $37.6B and the Madden franchise has sold 130m+ games.

Madden’s impact on NFL players and fans is remarkable. In 2020, the NFL and its players’ union signed a $1.5B deal with EA, $500m of which will go to players.

And as for fans, they’re just hoping EA will honor Madden properly.