quick thoughts on things we may see in 2025…

(1) A new wave of investigative journalists will break news via betting markets.

We learned in the election that betting markets are, in most cases, more accurate than professional polling and news reports of voting trends. While there seems to be no disincentive for spreading false information these days on social media, people act differently when money is on the line. The general population may benefit from bottom-line-driven fact checking and the use of betting markets to suss out the truth of what is really happening. I think we’ll see new types of tech-enabled betting markets AND a new cohort of investigative journalists and researchers become wealthy news sleuths by sourcing proprietary insights and breaking the news via betting markets as opposed to mainstream news outlets that are funded via advertising/clicks. (2) DIY software will replace certain apps for consumers AND the enterprise.

There has been much discussion of AI code reviews, GitHub co-pilot, and no-code app builders for the enterprise, but what are the implications of agent-assisted software development for consumers? Quick apps for your home or family were too hard to build until now. I think we’ll see some pretty remarkable and super niche software applications emerge in 2025, by and for consumers. And in the enterprise, the cost calculation of building your own internal tools will start to merit AI-made homegrown solutions to workflows and enterprise functions (and increasingly agents will replace these functions) as opposed to the usual “find a SaaS product to solve every need.”

Generative Fill, a new superpower integrated throughout Photoshop, launching in beta today.

Powered by Firefly, our generative AI family of models, Photoshop now let’s you summon new objects and augment creations layer by layer. Saves time, increases possibility, and pretty 🤯 Lots happening under the hood here, to get this right.
- We’re leveraging context from your Photoshop file to optimize your prompt.
- Firefly is trained on licensed / non-copywrited content (no scraping), so enterprises can use.
- Content credentials added for media provenance.

How will work/life change over next ~3-5 years? As we synthesize the latest tech + trends in culture, what are the implications?

In an attempt to connect dots, get your input, and prompt conversation…

🥁🔮 9 forecasts that made the cut: 🔮 Internet browsers will shift from generalized to specialized, as web apps, communal browsing, and decentralized tech grow.

Browsers are too generalized/antiquated for the future of web apps that are collaborative by default, multi-surface, and powerful (even Ps now on web!)

a few open questions/thoughts from taking off the rose-colored glasses on “generative AI": what disruptions are overblown, the perils of building start-ups (or features) on others’ models, and what will (and will never) change, in no particular order: 1/ the widening-availability and decreasing costs of the mega models will give rise to AI-powered features in every product, so i'd argue having a GTM advantage may be 80% of winning formula. only entirely new object models or network effects will be effective moats IMO.

today is a big day for both @Adobe and @figma. our teams are excited by the new possibilities and recognize both the opportunity and responsibility as we share our intent to come together. 🧵 i have known @zoink since figma’s early days, back when we were both building products in the design world more than a decade ago. ​

over the years, figma has meticulously crafted incredible products and built a remarkable team.

a twitter 10x brainstorm, hear me out:
IF every tweet was assigned a set of Topics via AI/NLP (auto or manual, mock-up below), and IF every creator thereby gained varying levels of “authority” in Topics based on how others w/ authority engaged w/ their tweets, THEN… could we (1) attack spam/misinfo using next-level community curation (vs. censorship), (2) actually organize the BEST content on twitter, enabling billions more ppl to enjoy media by topic, curated by those w/ authority,(3) empower world’s experts in every topic, wikipedia style?

You know that iconic scene, at the end of The Matrix when Neo suddenly “gets it” and picks bullets out of thin air as if they are cute and curious little things? Been thinking: what’s the equivalent of “seeing the matrix” for product leaders?

10+ Realizations that come to mind: That you should only do half of what you want (only half the options/tabs, half the offerings, and half the target audience) to compound your chances of true PMF. The builders i admire most are like Bonsai masters, they prune the most beautiful branches to strengthen the trunk.

we’re all enduring a fair bit of volatility as builders right now, big and small. here are a few insights for enduring tough periods that i find myself coming back to in #TheMessyMiddle - some essential hacks and perspective that may help: (1/8) you’ll have tough decisions to make that require uncomfortable debates. be the one to say what others are thinking. be optimistic about the future but pragmatic now. people make progress when they feel like they’re making progress. so surface the hard truths but transfer energy.

how will crafting great product experiences be fundamentally different over next decade?

1. the reliance of “ego analytics” for consumer engagement (likes, etc) is backfiring, consumers will resist measures and seek alternate forms of proof of value 2. while defaults will continue to matter more than anything else, average users have a base level of sophistication that allows them to “roll their own experiences“ - we’ll see more products have a “tailoring the product for you” onboarding

4 areas that get a fraction of the attention they should, from the standpoint of product and the CRITICALITY of design: The Interface: the place customers login + make decisions daily, whether personally or in a big co, is the battleground to KEEP customers (despite what service actually does). In next stage of SaaS, retention is the new growth. Designers = critical.

thinking: a key pillar of happiness, beyond having life’s basic needs, is feeling fully utilized. putting aside your comp/title/feeling of self-importance, happiness seems to peek when your skills are fully engaged (personal + professional) and learning curve is steep. having been through a few career swings myself (entrepreneur, big co VP, angel to VC and back, now leading product teams and helping founders...and a dad along the way), I’ve felt best when every skill was flexed.

While a product’s simplicity is its advantage, building a business requires serving your “power users” which ultimately breeds complexity and makes products more powerful but less accessible. It’s called “the product life cycle”... “The Product Life Cycle”: (1) Customers flock to a simple product, (2) Product adds new features to serve customers + grow biz, (3) Product gets complicated, (4) Customers flock to simple product. 😩

Even the best of leaders struggle between optimizing for optionality vs. decisiveness. But in a world of real-time tests and a value for lessons learned from incremental failures throughout a venture, decisiveness wins in the modern org. To make this real, when you see a proposal from your team that is well-vetted but conjures up discomfort, you’ll be tempted to put it in a holding pattern. Don’t. Whether a no or a yes, decisiveness unlocks the potential of a modern high-performing team.

I’ve long believed that “process” is the excretion of misalignment. One question I explore at length in #TheMessyMiddle is how you scale alignment as you grow without tripping over yourself. Process is how we force alignment that doesn’t happen naturally. When teams grow and complication ensues, you embed systems for accountability, more managers, and more meetings. Corporate obesity kicks in.