AI Summary
5 min readScott Belsky, the entrepreneur and investor behind Behance and Adobe’s creative products, publishes an annual set of forecasts for the near future of tech. He starts with a notion doc where he jots down observations throughout the year, then culls the list by sending drafts to a few friends and asking which ones they would cut. The final ten predictions are the ones that survive. As he put it, "if everyone dunces on it, that usually means it's actually super interesting." The conversation that follows is a rapid-fire jam on several of those predictions, with the hosts and Belsky pressure-testing each one and spinning out business ideas from them.
Recommendations Kill Favorites
Belsky's first prediction is that AI-driven recommendations have reached a tipping point where people will start trusting algorithms more than their own curated favorites. He described his own experience with Spotify's "enhance" function: "I realized that my playlists are like these old, dusty, limiting things that I've been a prisoner to." The argument is that humans tend to constrain themselves to a small set of go-to songs, restaurants, or travel spots because time is limited and they want a guaranteed good experience. Recommendations, by contrast, constantly expand the surface area of exposure. The hosts pushed back on whether this kills the emotional value of a friend-curated playlist, but Belsk
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Episode Intro & Setting the Stage** - Hosts Greg and the co-host return from a break, discuss their contrarian views on the future of work and tech, framing the conversation around "variant perception."
- 2 (04:15) **Introducing Scott Belsky & His Prediction Process** - The hosts bring in Scott Belsky, tech entrepreneur and author, to discuss his recent piece "10 Predictions for the Near Future of Tech."
- 3 (06:06) **The Web3 Debate: Trade-offs, Not Gospel** - The hosts and Scott discuss the polarized views on Web3, framing it as a series of trade-offs rather than a binary good/bad.
- 4 (19:02) **Prediction 1: Recommendations Kill Favorites** - Scott explains how AI-driven recommendations (e.g., Spotify's "enhance") are becoming more reliable than our own curated lists, potentially making the concept of "favorites" obsolete.
- 5 (26:11) **Prediction 2: The Great Opt-In (Personalized Experiences)** - The conversation shifts to how consumers will start opting back into personalized ads and data sharing for better, more seamless experiences.
- 6 (32:36) **New Business Idea: The Consumer Preference API** - Scott pitches a startup idea: a central hub where users proactively share their preferences (e.g., no shampoo in hotels) with brands via an API, creating a better experience for everyone.
- 7 (40:09) **Wikipedia as a Web3 Thought Experiment** - The conversation uses Wikipedia as a case study for the potential and pitfalls of financializing contributions via tokens.
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Show Notes
How will work and life change in a material way over the next 5 years? That one line, written by guest Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky), was enough to get hosts Sahil Bloom (@sahilbloom) and Greg Isenberg (@gregisenberg) to immediately invite the successful entrepreneur and investor onto Where It Happens. But, what started as an exploration of exploding trends turned into a conversation that resulted in, at least, three potential game-changing business ideas. If you're looking to place bets on the future -- or create the next unicorn -- this podcast will leave you with endless opportunities.
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