Passable Pup, Newsy Nitwit & Sunny Side Up 🌞

From startup financing to the increased prioritization of ESG practices, we've rounded up some fresh research on what trends companies should expect in 2023.   

Let's start with startup costs. 💰

Between talent, tech, and rent, startup costs can add up quickly. Payroll is a massive expense sometimes soaring past 50% of a startup’s overall expenses.

🏫 Rent comes in as the second most costly expense. With companies keen on bringing employees back to the office, in some parts of the country, a 1,000-square-foot commercial space in San Francisco or New York City could cost upto $90,000.

🤖 And then there is the cost of technology. A startup’s tech stack includes tools that improve efficiency, keep their data safe, and keep customers engaged. And the average startup uses between four and ten different tech tools. 

Covering everything from crypto and NFTs to digital fashion and gaming, the metaverse is a new frontier for capitalism.

And the revenue opportunity is incredible. Some analysts predict the market could approach $1.6 trillion by 2030. This digital gold rush has already drawn the attention of major brands like Gucci, Nike, Coca-Cola, JPMorgan, and much, much more.

These are some of the top funded met averse startups of 2022. 

Climate change and green goods are in the spotlight. ♻️ Whether you care about it or not, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is a trend that no one can ignore.

In fact, entire VC firms and hedge funds have been created around ESG principles. From seed-stage funding to growth-stage funding, investors are judging and promoting startups based on their ESG metric.

Not just this but influencers, hustlers and new media are also more keen on associating themselves with ESG driven startups. 

Florida’s popularity among investors might be stemming from the large funding rounds last year into several startups such as Fanatics and Yuga Labs and a host of successful exits including KnowBe4, ConnectWise and Reef in recent years. 

But there are definitely other economic and social reasons for the state’s new-found attractiveness. 

• The lack of state income tax means lower overall costs. 
• The state received the biggest boost from COVID migration with major tech talent relocating to Florida from New York and California.
• VCs have been deliberate about making the geographical dispersal of funding more diverse
• Many businesses and investors see Florida as a natural entry point to the growing Latin American market, making it an attractive location.

By now you’ve surely read scores of stories on how ChatGPT and other AI tools could help students pass Ivy League exams with a solid C+. 

In fact, an anonymous poll conducted by Fizz Post on 4500 Stanford students found that students have already used ChatGPT to study and write their exams. Professors are irate. Universities are fuming. 🤬 And the world at large is heavily debating the implications of the new AI tool. 

But honestly, is AI writing really that novel? 

For one, news outlets - including the Associated Press - have been publishing AI content for decades. It’s just that the issue has gained new attention amid the rise of ChatGPT.

So AI may be able to fetch you a passing grade at Harvard. But on the downside, its content can also be riddled with obvious errors that beg human attention. 

Here’s a recent incident on that note. 

Last Wednesday, news outlet CNET said it issued corrections on a number of articles after using an AI-powered tool to help write its stories. CNET used an AI tool (not ChatGPT) to write 77 published stories since November. Many of these articles had made substantial goof-ups. 

One correction was made to the article titled “What Is Compound Interest?” which did some wildly inaccurate maths.

Now this doesn’t seem like a major error at first read. But it’s definitely something that would fetch you zero marks in your maths exam if you used an AI to write it. 💩