Party's over, the next trillion-dollar markets are bears

I've been discussing on and off how primarily digital was all about consumers' gadgets, pizza-delivery startups, and in cases of B2B, SaaS, and cloud. I'm not reviewing it all over again, but the keyword you're looking for is laziness (or efficiency, depending on which side of the fence you're on).

In case you need a quick recap, here goes.

All these markets are now a) saturated or b) dealt with by the new digital incumbents. Think you can reinvent internet search in 2023? Think again.

From there, new digital businesses, disruptors, and new entrants will have to sober up and start looking at the hard problems. Which ones? All the ones the digital revolution didn't bother addressing as they would be too costly and too complex to deal with.

Energy, climate, healthcare, food, housing, pensions, and education come to mind.

The trillion-dollar question, though? Where are the structures, ecosystems, and private or public funds geared to tackle these problems?

Because thinking 'deeptech' (which mostly is pimping out the idea of R&D) is not going to solve these. The reason is that, beyond the massive investments needed, most of the expected solutions will not come from inventing new technology. If solving the eminently complex problem of proteins' 3D-folding is now mostly done, it doesn't move us an inch in the direction of better, affordable personalized medicine.

What makes these markets bears is that their colossal inertia is coming from social practices, public opinion, cultural entrenchment, and other non-mathematical problems. And yet, none of these fields are considered at the core of what we think of as digital and innovation in 2023.

And this is alarming.