What surprised us in 2016. And what we’re excited for in 2017.

Elisa Schreiber
Greylock Perspectives
5 min readJan 10, 2017

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We are at an exciting moment in time for technology. Secular shifts, including mobile and cloud, have created a unique opportunity for scale ups across all industries. Entrepreneurs are solving real problems with technology. Last year, the industry saw some impressive advancements in messaging, AI, and machine learning. Platforms like Amazon Echo showed consumers the power of voice as an interface and the beginning of self-driving cars and trucking fleets marked a turning point for autonomous vehicles. As a new wave of startups build on these emerging technologies, I asked some of our investment partners — Asheem Chandna, Jerry Chen, Josh Elman, John Lilly and Sarah Tavel — what surprised them most about last year, and what they think will make an impact in 2017. Here’s what they said:

What was the biggest surprise in tech last year?

Jerry Chen

The failure of every big data/stats model to predict the Trump Presidency. And, Microsoft buying LinkedIn, which to me signals more big tech M&A to come and consolidation in the SaaS/Cloud era.”

Simon Rothman

The regulatory frontier, which surprised me in both positive and negative ways:
1. NHTSA introduced their guidelines for self-driving cars.
2. Two of the most progressive cities in the world — San Francisco and New York — regulated short term rentals.
3. Title III of the Jobs Act now enables equity crowdfunding for non-accredited investors.”

Josh Elman

“Everyone says “no one is downloading new mobile apps anymore.” But this year Pokemon Go had over 500M downloads and engaged hordes of people walking around their neighborhoods and cities staring at their phones and catching Pokemon. Mobile computing has helped people stay in touch and be entertained. This was the first time en masse I saw people being compelled by their phones to get out of the house. It was quite a phenomenon.”

John Lilly

“I think my biggest surprise overall was how much popular entertainment and technology converged. How quickly we went from Facebook & Twitter & Alexa to Black Mirror & Mr. Robot & Westworld and back again. The speed at which new communication schemes are getting invented, tried out, widely deployed, and then become the fabric of how we interact — it’s faster than it’s ever been, and lots of times we don’t even notice how profoundly we change how we interact in the short space of just a year or two. That’s come with good effects and bad effects, and so now we as a society have to figure out how to come to terms with those and shape them more quickly than ever.”

Sarah Tavel

“We’re not the outsiders anymore. I’ve always thought of the work we do here as positive disruptors of the status quo. This year, we’ve seen the negative result of unintended consequences. The technology we’ve built have changed the jobs people have and what they earn. The content our algorithms prioritize influence people’s perceptions and opinions. To me, the presidential election showed that technology doesn’t just disrupt incumbent companies and industries, it disrupts our society. We’re not the outsiders anymore — we must go from being disruptors of the status quo to leaders of it.”

What areas or technologies are you most excited for in 2017?

Josh Elman

“I still think there are a ton of unexplored areas on mobile. I’m excited with the beginnings of augmented reality and how we can start to view the world through our phones and eventually glasses in new ways. I’m also excited by the evolution of voice as an interface — this is going to create a lot more opportunities for new companies who can help users solve problems through voice communication or provide more entertainment over audio.”

Jerry Chen

A new generation of AI-powered enterprise applications from rethinking large horizontal apps like CRM, support and services, to vertical solutions in healthcare, construction, and fintech. Also, step function improvements in autonomous vehicle technologies including computer vision, sensor and mapping technologies and AV driving systems.”

Asheem Chandna

“The ability to create intelligence by reasoning over large amounts of data. There are huge opportunities across major horizontal technology areas (e.g. cybersecurity, CRM, others) and across vertical industries such as financial services, healthcare, retail.”

Simon Rothman

The intersection of Marketplaces & Mobility. 2016 was a bubble year. 2017 will be formative for autonomy. Over 2017–2018, I think the reality will start to catch up to the promise. Cars are now transitioning from hardware products laced with software to software products wrapped by hardware.”

John Lilly

“For next year, the thing I’m most excited about isn’t so much the emergence of any specific new computing platform — voice, or augmented reality, or robot cars that take you places — as it is the combinations of these interfaces. I would expect voice assistants like the Amazon Echo and Google Home to rediscover how powerful touch screens are when you add voice & vision together, for instance. Beyond all that, I think systems will learn to know us each better so they can answer questions like a friend might — instead of a list of search results about what restaurants are nearby or what books just came out, I expect we’ll have systems that can tell us places we’d really enjoy eating at or pieces that we’re likely to really want to read, things like that. I just think we’re finally at the point where many disparate systems and interfaces will start to, just maybe, feel like they fit together and fit inside our human lives.”

Sarah Tavel

“I continue to be excited about marketplaces or transactional businesses that create a 10x experience for consumers, and use technology to recast incumbent cost structures to provide that better experience at a cheaper cost (or for free!). Founders are doing this in everything from housing to fintech to health. Also, at Pinterest I led product for our computer vision team, and got to see first hand the impact deep learning had on the user experience we were able to create. I continue to be on the look out for companies using computer vision and more generally deep learning to create new consumer experiences.”

What are you most excited for in tech this year? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Partner @GreylockVC. BoD @NoodlesCompany. Smashing the patriarchy @AllRaise. Former @Hulu. Organized first @TEDx. Feminist. I do all my own stunts.