Every year there seems to be something (or a few things) that the tech and VC world is obsessed with. Last year and into 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic overshadowed everything, but it could be argued that the future of workâ„¢ was one of the main topics of discussion in a year when there had been so many questions about getting back to the office and how the job would be done in the midst of the pandemic.

Over the past year, several themes have captured the attention of startup founders, investors and employees. We’ve rounded up some of the topics the startup and venture capital world couldn’t help but talk about in 2020.

It may be too early to say which are just fads and which will stick with us in 2022, at least some (like NFTs) have become so popular that investors have put money behind them.

Miami

Towards the end of 2020, it seemed like everyone in tech and VC could talk about Miami. The city was presented as the next big technological pole after some prominent investors moved to the Sunshine State. This energy continued until early 2021, although according to the Chronicle of San Francisco, Florida was not the first destination for people leaving San Francisco during the pandemic: it was actually New York.

Still, that hasn’t stopped the Miami talks from being a destination for tech companies and VCs. Just check out the mayor of Miami Francois Suarez‘s Twitter retweets.

TVN

When much of the tech world started talk about NFTs in the spring, it looked like it might be a temporary fad. But NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, seem to be here to stay a bit longer.

With much of the world moved online, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic (and now the Omicron variant), and Bitcoin reaching an all-time high last year, NFTs have grown in popularity. Venture capitalists have invested in NFT markets like OpenSea, and former First Lady Melanie Trump even announced its own NFT platform in December. People are give NFTs as holiday gifts and large companies like AMC offered NFTs to clients.

The metaverse

The idea of ​​the metaverse isn’t new, but it has exploded into mainstream conversation this year and has become something startups and large corporations have started to focus on. At least 220 companies in the Crunchbase database mention “metaverse” in their description. Perhaps most notably, the company formerly known as Facebook even changed its name to Meta to mark its shifting focus on the metaverse.

In a way, that makes sense, given that the pandemic has moved so much in the virtual world. Gaming companies – probably the closest to establishing their own kind of metaverse – have also thrived during the pandemic, with users flocking to people like Roblox and Epic games‘Fortnite. While it’s debated when the metaverse will actually be here, there’s no doubt that more and more companies are striving to make it a reality.

DAO

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, are online communities owned and controlled by their members. DAOs became somewhat common this year after one of them raised millions of dollars to bid on a copy of the U.S. Constitution that was being auctioned at Sotheby’s (the DAO did not have the winning bid).

More companies are now accepting cryptocurrency as a form of payment, and there have been more efforts to fund money through DAO to purchase physical and digital goods, meaning that DAO are probably not going anywhere.

Global Tiger Management

Global Tiger Management isn’t exactly new to investing in startups, but this year it’s made much more headlines for its increased pace of investing. The number of deals concluded by Tiger Global has increased significantly from 2020, with many of these companies new to the company’s portfolio, according to an analysis by Crunchbase.

By mid-2021, Tiger Global was the biggest investor in unicorn startups, according to Crunchbase data — and it’s not even a traditional venture capital firm. Little is known about Tiger Global and the firm does not generally grant interviews. With its rapid pace of investing in some of the most beloved private companies, it is safe to say that Tiger Global was the top startup investor in 2021 and will likely remain active this year as well.

Web3

This list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Web3, or the idea of ​​a decentralized blockchain-based internet. It’s not there yet, but it’s something the tech world has been focusing on lately. More recently, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey makes known his thoughts on the matter, Tweeter that the venture capitalists and their sponsors funding Web3 projects would be the owners, not the people. Dorsey also did a dig at the VC company Andreessen Horowitz, who has invested in companies work on web technology 3.

Web3 is part of a larger interest in blockchain technology, on which NFTs and DAOs are also based. And after?

Illustration: Dom Guzman