2025 Predictions
These are always fun, right? Here’s my list of random predictions for 2025.
Figma loses ground, product designers and product managers will adopt AI coding and prototyping solutions more and more - it won’t become the norm just yet, but the differentiator.
Figma’s AI vision has been ambitious: they shared some exciting stuff at Config and acquired Jordan Singer’s Diagram. But most of those features didn’t launch or got pulled back, Jordan Singer has left, and they’ve been pretty quiet on the AI front. Meanwhile, Cursor and Vercel v0 seem like they get better every day.
Drawing in Figma will remain important for visualizing many different solutions quickly, but to build a high quality product with high level of polish and great interaction, iterating on prototypes is essential - this was the “design engineer” narrative of last year - but now anyone can be a design engineer. When quick realizations of ideas become this fast, we’ll also see prototypes become part of early planning and PRD stages of product development.
AI enables new forms of interfacing with apps but there is no monolithic UI paradigm. We will see more apps with multiple AI UIs within.
Cursor and Notion have pioneered multiple ways of interfacing with AI: in-line editing, chatting, and a more agentic approach with the ability to utilize more context and are more persistent and long-running. The Browser Company is attempting to do this at the browser-level with Dia.
But I don’t expect we will cross the chasm of adoption or functionality just yet at the browser or OS level (ie Apple Intelligence) this year. When not at the app-level, AI is still missing context necessary for specific functions.
Purely chat-based interfaces have proven to be powerful in their current state, but there are tradeoffs. Prompting and writing is slow but more malleable. Clicking contextual commands is faster but less flexible. For more consumer-focused apps, I predict more contextual command interfaces gaining adoption for their ease of use.
In enterprise and SaaS products, I predict more startups exploring canvas-based, Bret Victor-esque computing interfaces (like tldraw) that allow AI-assisted, no-code app and function building, paired with chat and command-based interfaces.
As we have many different types of GUIs and clients interfacing with backends that look and act differently, so will be the case with AI.
Greater crypto adoption catalyzed by more memecoin bull-runs, enabled by easier on-ramps, IRL/URL ecosystem, and maturation of DeFi.
While periods of memecoin mania will drive most of the demand for crypto, so will the desire for greater, stable yields. Easier ways to on-ramp and use crypto will aid with adoption.
As interest rates fall and traditional markets experience more volatility due to tariffs, more conservative investors will look for different channels of stable yield. DeFi and real-world assets provide this, but also Coinbase and Robinhood - currently the easiest and most trusted methods of on-ramp - provide yields more favorable than traditional banks. Rising tides here will lift all boats in crypto.
Interoperability, chain abstraction, gasless transactions as well as maturation of the crypto payment ecosystem (Coinbase Debit, Robinhood Credit Card?, and other debit options), remittances, and cross-border trade will bring more normies onboard.
Apple buys Snap and the future of AR is AI.
The Vision Pro has not born fruit and the developer ecosystem has not been as robust as Apple had hoped. They need stronger in-house product development to realize and inspire AR use cases. Also, the past year has proven the need for a more consumer-friendly form-factor if they hope to grow demand for the consumer and developer sides of the market.
Long-term: as hardware companies continue to struggle with footprint and form factor for AR-enabled glasses, AI assistance supercharges the watch and Airpods as the primary interfaces for mobile AI and computing. Apple Intelligence will make its way to these surfaces this year. See The Best Interface is No Interface by Golden Krishna.
Traditional media continues to fall, a new crop of influencers/media personalities appear across a more fragmented landscape.
Last year we saw Hawk Tuah, Huberman, Tucker Carlson, Call Her Daddy, Kylie Kelce doing their thing, growing their audiences and influence. On Substack and TikTok, we see a growing amount of tastemakers gaining audiences as well, taking away engagement from Instagram and X.
Existing social media channels will get jammed up with AI slop, noise via agents, causing users to retreat to media they can trust - personalities with formed parasocial relationships. More influencers will see this opportunity and take advantage of it.
As channel fragmentation grows, the channels themselves become less important. Audiences become entrenched in their favorite influencers, incumbent influencers gain power, sponsorships, media deals. But smaller, niche influencers focus on community-building and paid subscription models outside of free channels.
Captain America, The Thunderbolts, and Superman will cause a Disney and Hollywood reckoning. Mission Impossible will be #1.
For the past two years we’ve seen more of the top box office performers as those that catalyze a larger cultural conversation, memes and/or are doing something more interesting as auteur-driven big-budget blockbusters. See Barbenheimer, Dune, Wicked, Avatar.
The cultural repudiation of the Disney/DC comic book movie formula will continue. Captain America and The Thunderbolts will tank, while Superman will do well - due to a fresher take by James Gunn and some need for a hopeful and unique interpretation of comic book escapism - but underperform.
On the flipside, Mission Impossible will top the box office a testament to Tom Cruise’s commitment to real-stakes spectacle and people will show up for the finale to his career.
That's all I got. Let's see how I do in a year.