Our 2025 Predictions, Looked At Again

This post has been rewritten. The original was published in November 2024 and predicted what 2025 would look like. Leaving a forecast up years after the date has passed is not useful to anyone, and the original leaned on several statistics with no source attached. Those have been removed rather than re-cited. The four themes are the ones we actually named at the time.

Writing predictions is easy. Going back to them is the part most people skip, so this is us going back. The original also promised five trends and listed four, which is its own small lesson about checking your work.

1. Generative AI in the business itself

What we said. That AI would move from a novelty into ordinary business strategy, and that founders should think about where it fits, not whether it does.

How it looks now. Broadly right, and faster than we expected. The more interesting thing for a young founder is what did not happen: AI has not made the hard parts easier. Working out what problem you are solving, and whether anybody will pay for the answer, is exactly as hard as it was. Tools help you build the thing. They do not tell you whether to build it.

That is why the course still spends its first three modules on the problem before it goes anywhere near a solution.

2. Sustainability and the circular economy

What we said. That environmental thinking would move from a marketing layer into the design of products themselves.

How it looks now. Partly. The design shift is real in some industries and cosmetic in others, and telling the difference is a skill in itself. We originally quoted a figure about how much more likely people are to buy from sustainable brands. We have taken it out, because we cannot now find where it came from, and a number you cannot source is worse than no number.

3. Customer experience as the difference

What we said. That personalisation and consistency across channels would separate businesses that grow from ones that stall.

How it looks now. True, and truer at small scale than at large. A student selling at a Saturday market has an advantage a big company spends millions trying to buy: they know their customers by name, and they can ask them directly what went wrong. That is the whole of module 3.

4. More young founders

What we said. That younger people would start more businesses, driven by wanting independence and wanting to do something useful.

How it looks now. This is the one we are least able to check honestly. We originally cited a survey about young consumers preferring socially committed brands, again without a source, and it has been removed. What we can say is narrower and first-hand: the students who finish this course overwhelmingly pick problems in their own community rather than abstract ones.

What we would tell 2024

Trend lists are mostly a way of sounding informed. The things that actually decided whether a student venture worked, in our experience since, were much duller: whether the problem was real, whether the price covered the cost, and whether anybody told the founder the truth early enough to change course.

None of those are trends. They are in modules 1 to 8, which you can read without an account.