Happy Friday. Welcome to The Chaos Coordinator! We are Brain Candy's snarky little sister, delivering carefully curated news happening across the industry (that you should probably care about) right to your inbox, with a hefty dose of irreverence.
In this issue, we dive into:
Andreessen Horowitz
2024 M&A
Buzzwords
A Year in Search
What's happening in.....
PE/VC
Good News for Politicians Who “Support an Optimistic Technology-Enabled Future"
Whatever that means.
VC firm Andreessen Horowitz says it will give literally any politician money if they help deregulate tech. The announcement was disclosed in a blog post by firm co-founder Ben Horowitz, and it echoed a recent "techno-optimist manifesto" published by his partner Marc Andreessen. In short, the company will back politicians advocating rapid innovation and startups, especially in the realms of AI, biomedical research, and decentralized technology. Andreessen Horowitz isn't against regulation per se, but contends that some existing safety measures belong to a bygone era, and that a lot of new tech rules are "written for the sake of regulatory capture by incumbents." "We are non-partisan, one issue voters: If a candidate supports an optimistic technology-enabled future, we are for them. If they want to choke off important technologies, we are against them."
Read more here. For some additional conversation around the same topic of regulatory capture, check out investor Bill Gurley live at the All-In Summit here.
CAPITAL MARKETS
Is There a Light at the End of the M&A Tunnel?
The outlook for 2024 is looking "cautiously optimistic."
Amidst this year's grand finale of decreasing inflation and interest rates finding their equilibrium, deal-makers may be starting to return to the negotiating table in 2024 following a straight up depressing 2023. "The level of dialogue among dealmakers is at levels last seen in 2021 and the first half of 2022, the most active periods for M&As in history", says Goldman Sachs’ co-head of Global M&A Stephan Feldgoise on Goldman Sachs Exchanges. But translating those discussions into actual deals will require buyers and sellers to come to terms with lower transactions and valuations, Feldgoise says. "Founders, owners, board members, [and] management teams need to come to a realization of a new paradigm."
While the hype surrounding AI has yet to die down, 2024 is poised to shift the narrative from AI simply being a marketing buzzword to attracts clicks. "Discussions surrounding Artificial Intelligence at events rarely do more than scratch the surface and often lack real use cases or specifics. This shallow understanding of the technology can lead to misuse of the term, for example mistaking basic chatbots as tools with AI capabilities," Forbes reports. In the upcoming year, businesses are being encouraged to dive deeper into a more profound comprehension of AI's applications, given that the global AI market is projected to exceed half a trillion USD by next year. Additionally, the forecast indicates that the global market revenue for AI in marketing is anticipated to reach $107 billion by 2028. As we approach 2024, it is becoming more and more clear that Gen AI’s true ROI will depend on a marketer’s ability to leverage the technology’s full potential.
If you found yourself Googling the recipe for the Grimace shake this year, you're not alone.
In light of the holiday season, Google has gifted its users with it's annually released Year in Search (2023's Version) highlighting what was trending this past year on both a global and country-by-country scale. Here are some of our favorite trending searches of the year, in no particular order or categorical breakdown:
