(1)金利
(2)スタートアップの資金調達環境
(3)web3
(4)新世代のSaaS

この記事では、1ドル=100円（$1 = 100円）として、日本円も併せて記載しています。

The Fed tames inflation. We exit 2023 with inflation below 2.5% but a Fed Funds rate of 5%. Forward software multiples touch 7.0x forward, up from 5.8x today, on the relatively strong growth rates of most public software.

Interest rates will level off in the first half of 2023 and I think there is a good chance of a “soft landing” or a very mild recession in 2023.

The fundraising market thaws, but at materially lower prices than the first half of 2022. The early stage market prices seeds at $10-15m post & Series As at $50-60m post (with about $500k in ARR). The mid-stage market for Bs, Cs, & Ds rebounds but chaos reigns.

・シードラウンド：1,000〜1,500万ドル（約10～15億円）程度
・シリーズAラウンド：5,000〜6,000万ドル（約50～60億円）程度
　このときのARRは約50万ドル程度（約5,000万円）
・シリーズB〜Dラウンド：市場は回復するものの混乱が続く

Good businesses with product market fit, positive unit economics, and strong leadership teams will raise capital although it will be at the new normal in terms of valuation. I believe that “new normal” is more or less where we were in 2015 where seed rounds were done around $10mm, A rounds were done around $15mm to $25mm, B rounds were done around $25mm to $50mm, and growth rounds had a cap at 10x revenues.

・シードラウンド：1,000万ドル前後（約10億円）
・シリーズAラウンド：1,500〜2,500万ドル前後（約15～25億円）
・シリーズBラウンド：2,500〜5,000万ドル前後（約25～50億円）
・グロースラウンド：売上マルチプルで10倍前後（2015年とほぼ同程度）

Most categories slow down meaningfully, including Defi. More than 100 web3-enabled games launch. Virtual wallets ensconce themselves into web2 applications. Marketing becomes the first broad use case of web3 after Defi, catalyzed by the death of the third-party cookie.

Like the startup sector more broadly, web3 will go through a triage of sorts in 2023. Projects and protocols that have found product market fit, have real token economics, and ship new features quickly will attract new interest and rise in value. But many web3 projects have not found product market fit, have weak or no token economics, and do not execute well and I think we will see many of them continue to flounder and fail in 2023.

We’re on the cusp of unlocking a new generation of web3 native games that will be fun, broadly appealing, and uniquely enabled by blockchain technologies.

ML propels SaaS into a massive second wave that increases workers’ productivity measurably. Machine learning models predict code, synthesize images, author blog posts reducing composition time by a factor of 2 or 3. Users grow accustomed to this very quickly & ML becomes a requisite feature in most workflow SaaS.

Since the shift to cloud over a decade ago, first-gen SaaS platforms have become outdated. Meanwhile, user demands have continuously increased. In the coming year, I expect we’ll see a new generation of SaaS platforms emerge to meet those heightened expectations for how software should work.
（中略）
These solutions will be data-native; the user experiences will be 10x better, with embedded automations and intelligence that trivialize the time-consuming workflows we still perform manually today. In turn, these next-gen solutions are likely to compete with the first-gen systems of record that might appear engrained, such as Salesforce, Workday, Zendesk, and Anaplan.

米国の著名なVCの2023年トレンド予測は以下の通り

(1) 金利：2022年は記録的なインフレの年で、これに対処するために行われた金利引き上げの結果、テック企業の株価が低迷したが、2023年はインフレ率が緩和し、金利上昇が止まることで、ソフトウェア企業のマルチプルは回復する

(2) スタートアップの資金調達環境：バリュエーションは上がりにくく、ダウンラウンドでの資金調達の割合が大幅に増加する

(3) web3：2022年のような破竹の勢いは失われるものの、トークンエコノミクスなど健全性が担保されているプロジェクトには注目が集まり、マーケティングやモバイルペイメント等の技術領域の発展が期待される

(4) 新世代のSaaS：人工知能や機械学習による自動化・効率化を行う新世代SaaSに注目が集まる