The list of great use cases is endless. These are just 3 that immediately came to mind and that wouldn't require the technology to be significantly better to spur greater adoption. In fact, the technology is already there and convincing enough. I also don't think the above requires the hardware to be as small, or as fashionable, as a pair of sunglasses. It just needs to be cheaper, a bit more portable, and have a few incremental features.

At that point, I'll be ready to buy. What about you?

Cover photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash

• Interest rate cuts: This was perhaps an easy one as there was already a market consensus that rates would start to come down in 2024. The Bank of Canada cut its policy interest rate by 175 bps (target of 3.25%), and the US cut its federal funds rate by 100 bps (target of 4.5%). [1 point]

• Impact of higher rates: I predicted that things would get worse in 2024 before they started to get better (maybe toward the end of 2024 or perhaps in 2025). In some ways, I think I was right. But I'm not sure we've returned to a "risk-on" approach in commercial real estate, like I suggested. Toward the end of the year, my American friends were telling me that things were suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic and that more deals were being done. But I still feel like we've been kicking the can down the road here in Canada. The public markets certainly did very well, but I think the private markets are still hiding some underwater real estate investments. [0.5 point]

• Balanced residential resale market: I thought that we would return to a more balanced resale market in 2024, certainly for the most-in demand cities and submarkets. Here in Toronto, it remains a buyer's market on the condominium side, but the freehold market in Central Toronto has shown signs of improvement over the last few months. Detached house values are up 4.6% year-over-year, despite listing supply also being up 29%. The resilience of core submarkets is what you would expect to see right now during this part of the cycle. (If you're interested in Toronto real estate, my friend Christopher Bibby has a great newsletter that he publishes periodically.) At the same time, I thought that the Bank of Canada would be more resistant to lowering rates compared to other central banks, and that this would be good for the Canadian dollar. I was wrong. [0 points]

• Finding good real estate deals in 2024: I argued that this year would be a pivotal year for finding new opportunities. Maybe that was the case for some of you, but as I said above, I think that here in Canada we're still kicking the can down the road. So this one is hard to say. 2025 may end up being more pivotal for many real estate developers and investors. [0 points]

• Declining hard costs: Like many of my other predictions, this is market specific. But this absolutely happened here in Toronto. For some trades and divisions, costs are down in the range of 25-30%. And I can tell you that over this past year I received many phone calls from construction executives that sounded something like this, "Hey, I'm about to lay off a bunch of people, so I just wanted to call and see if you might have any new projects starting up in the near future." [1 point]

• Return to office: A year ago, I wrote that return to office seemed to have stalled out at around 50% utilization. But I argued that this wouldn't hold and that, of the people who work in offices, most would go back to spending > 50% of their week in it. Looking at the latest data for Toronto's CBD (from November 15, 2024), the average weekly utilization figure is now up to 73%. And the peak day figure (Wednesday) is now 84%. (Both of these are relative to pre-COVID.) This is up meaningfully compared to last year. I don't know at what point we reach an equilibrium, but for now, we seem to be still heading up and to the right. [1 point]

• Augmented reality: 2023 was the year of AI. I argued that this year would be the year of augmented reality and that this would represent a further blurring of our offline and online worlds. This was, I think, coming from the fact that Apple Vision Pro was set to be released. But if this happened at all, it happened only incrementally and it certainly wasn't a mainstream phenomenon. Most people I talk to haven't even tried Apple Vision Pro, though I remain blown away by the technology. If you haven't yet tried it, do yourself a favor and book a demo at your local Apple Store. That said, I'm not going to give myself any points for this one. [0 points]

• Autonomous vehicles: I was somewhat bearish on this a year ago. I said that it feels as if we're in the trough of disillusionment (within the hype cycle), even if I was optimistic long term. So this year was a pleasant surprise and I was thoroughly impressed by the progress that Waymo, in particular, made. As of June of this year, they had already logged over 22 million rider-only miles. They are the company to beat right now. [0 points]

• Impact of automation: This was a weak prediction because it wasn't particularly precise. I said that our shift toward greater automation would feel more insidious than immediate (certainly in 2024). I guess this is true. Elon Musk unveiled dancing bartender robots this year, but they weren't exactly ready to take all of our jobs. Reluctantly, I'll give myself a half point. [0.5 point]

• Growth of TikTok Shop: This is where I argued that we should be looking for the future of shopping. And the data certainly supports this. According to recent research from The New Consumer, over 60% of Gen Z's report using TikTok every day. And half of all monthly active users report having already made a purchase through the platform. For those that use it every day, this figure increases to 57%. I don't use TikTok very often -- if at all -- but I know it's extremely popular. I'm also not an expert on e-commerce, but I have a belief that TikTok (and the likes), augmented reality, and crypto are going to give birth to some interesting new ways of buying things. [1 point]

• Return of crypto: When I wrote last year's post, the total crypto market capitalization was approximately $1.74 trillion. This was down from almost $3 trillion at the peak of the market in 2021. I argued that the "crypto winter" would end this year and that its total market cap would exceed its previous peak by the end of this year. Today, it's about $3.45 trillion. If only I bought more. But to be honest, this was a total guess. [1 point]

Total score: 6/11 (~55%). Not bad.

I like this score because it means I'm not being too consensus. What fun would that be? That said, I do think some of my predictions were a little obvious. I don't want to be just extrapolating existing data forward; I want to be thinking critically. I also try not to stray too far into topics that I'm not well versed on, like shopping on TikTok. But it's a fine line given my strong interest in tech and crypto. I'll see what I can do to tighten things up and be a little more non-consensus with my predictions this year.

Stay tuned.

It's an iPhone app. There's not much to do in the app, there aren't a lot of buttons to press. Once it's installed and you set the permissions, every time you put on your headphones — your AirPods or any other headphones, it doesn't matter—it chimes and says, "Beebop's been activated." (Beebop is the first project from the company, Hopscotch Labs.)

Then as you walk around the city, it will tell you things about certain places. Eventually, if I walk by a place where my friend was, it tells me that Alex was here two days ago. If I walk by a place and someone's inside, it tells me that Max is inside that place. A lot of it is still under development. Eventually, people leave a comment at a place. Imagine Twitter. It is as if you leave a tweet and you stick it in the ground. When you walk over it, you hear it.

So like before, it's about experiencing cities:

It's been a long time since I built something. What's different now? AI is what's different. You know what's different? Everyone's on their phones all the time. Back in my day, we made stuff for the streets. You would use your phone, you'd put it away, and stuff would happen. Where are the people making that stuff anymore? All we make is stuff that makes you look at the screen. Let's make stuff that gets you out in the world, where you're not glued to the devices. You're out there doing stuff. Big companies out there aren't going to make stuff like this.

The key idea here is that augmented reality doesn't have to just be visual. Visual also requires somebody to figure out a cool set of glasses that people will actually wear out in public. Who knows when this happens, though I do think it will eventually.

So what Dennis is doing is making something that works today -- with audio. This has been called the poor person's augmented reality, but I think that's selling it short. This is really clever. And once again, it's fundamentally connected to how people live in and interact with our cities.

The list of great use cases is endless. These are just 3 that immediately came to mind and that wouldn't require the technology to be significantly better to spur greater adoption. In fact, the technology is already there and convincing enough. I also don't think the above requires the hardware to be as small, or as fashionable, as a pair of sunglasses. It just needs to be cheaper, a bit more portable, and have a few incremental features.

At that point, I'll be ready to buy. What about you?

Cover photo by Bram Van Oost on Unsplash

• Interest rate cuts: This was perhaps an easy one as there was already a market consensus that rates would start to come down in 2024. The Bank of Canada cut its policy interest rate by 175 bps (target of 3.25%), and the US cut its federal funds rate by 100 bps (target of 4.5%). [1 point]

• Impact of higher rates: I predicted that things would get worse in 2024 before they started to get better (maybe toward the end of 2024 or perhaps in 2025). In some ways, I think I was right. But I'm not sure we've returned to a "risk-on" approach in commercial real estate, like I suggested. Toward the end of the year, my American friends were telling me that things were suddenly feeling a lot more optimistic and that more deals were being done. But I still feel like we've been kicking the can down the road here in Canada. The public markets certainly did very well, but I think the private markets are still hiding some underwater real estate investments. [0.5 point]

• Balanced residential resale market: I thought that we would return to a more balanced resale market in 2024, certainly for the most-in demand cities and submarkets. Here in Toronto, it remains a buyer's market on the condominium side, but the freehold market in Central Toronto has shown signs of improvement over the last few months. Detached house values are up 4.6% year-over-year, despite listing supply also being up 29%. The resilience of core submarkets is what you would expect to see right now during this part of the cycle. (If you're interested in Toronto real estate, my friend Christopher Bibby has a great newsletter that he publishes periodically.) At the same time, I thought that the Bank of Canada would be more resistant to lowering rates compared to other central banks, and that this would be good for the Canadian dollar. I was wrong. [0 points]

• Finding good real estate deals in 2024: I argued that this year would be a pivotal year for finding new opportunities. Maybe that was the case for some of you, but as I said above, I think that here in Canada we're still kicking the can down the road. So this one is hard to say. 2025 may end up being more pivotal for many real estate developers and investors. [0 points]

• Declining hard costs: Like many of my other predictions, this is market specific. But this absolutely happened here in Toronto. For some trades and divisions, costs are down in the range of 25-30%. And I can tell you that over this past year I received many phone calls from construction executives that sounded something like this, "Hey, I'm about to lay off a bunch of people, so I just wanted to call and see if you might have any new projects starting up in the near future." [1 point]

• Return to office: A year ago, I wrote that return to office seemed to have stalled out at around 50% utilization. But I argued that this wouldn't hold and that, of the people who work in offices, most would go back to spending > 50% of their week in it. Looking at the latest data for Toronto's CBD (from November 15, 2024), the average weekly utilization figure is now up to 73%. And the peak day figure (Wednesday) is now 84%. (Both of these are relative to pre-COVID.) This is up meaningfully compared to last year. I don't know at what point we reach an equilibrium, but for now, we seem to be still heading up and to the right. [1 point]

• Augmented reality: 2023 was the year of AI. I argued that this year would be the year of augmented reality and that this would represent a further blurring of our offline and online worlds. This was, I think, coming from the fact that Apple Vision Pro was set to be released. But if this happened at all, it happened only incrementally and it certainly wasn't a mainstream phenomenon. Most people I talk to haven't even tried Apple Vision Pro, though I remain blown away by the technology. If you haven't yet tried it, do yourself a favor and book a demo at your local Apple Store. That said, I'm not going to give myself any points for this one. [0 points]

• Autonomous vehicles: I was somewhat bearish on this a year ago. I said that it feels as if we're in the trough of disillusionment (within the hype cycle), even if I was optimistic long term. So this year was a pleasant surprise and I was thoroughly impressed by the progress that Waymo, in particular, made. As of June of this year, they had already logged over 22 million rider-only miles. They are the company to beat right now. [0 points]

• Impact of automation: This was a weak prediction because it wasn't particularly precise. I said that our shift toward greater automation would feel more insidious than immediate (certainly in 2024). I guess this is true. Elon Musk unveiled dancing bartender robots this year, but they weren't exactly ready to take all of our jobs. Reluctantly, I'll give myself a half point. [0.5 point]

• Growth of TikTok Shop: This is where I argued that we should be looking for the future of shopping. And the data certainly supports this. According to recent research from The New Consumer, over 60% of Gen Z's report using TikTok every day. And half of all monthly active users report having already made a purchase through the platform. For those that use it every day, this figure increases to 57%. I don't use TikTok very often -- if at all -- but I know it's extremely popular. I'm also not an expert on e-commerce, but I have a belief that TikTok (and the likes), augmented reality, and crypto are going to give birth to some interesting new ways of buying things. [1 point]

• Return of crypto: When I wrote last year's post, the total crypto market capitalization was approximately $1.74 trillion. This was down from almost $3 trillion at the peak of the market in 2021. I argued that the "crypto winter" would end this year and that its total market cap would exceed its previous peak by the end of this year. Today, it's about $3.45 trillion. If only I bought more. But to be honest, this was a total guess. [1 point]

Total score: 6/11 (~55%). Not bad.

I like this score because it means I'm not being too consensus. What fun would that be? That said, I do think some of my predictions were a little obvious. I don't want to be just extrapolating existing data forward; I want to be thinking critically. I also try not to stray too far into topics that I'm not well versed on, like shopping on TikTok. But it's a fine line given my strong interest in tech and crypto. I'll see what I can do to tighten things up and be a little more non-consensus with my predictions this year.

Stay tuned.

It's an iPhone app. There's not much to do in the app, there aren't a lot of buttons to press. Once it's installed and you set the permissions, every time you put on your headphones — your AirPods or any other headphones, it doesn't matter—it chimes and says, "Beebop's been activated." (Beebop is the first project from the company, Hopscotch Labs.)

Then as you walk around the city, it will tell you things about certain places. Eventually, if I walk by a place where my friend was, it tells me that Alex was here two days ago. If I walk by a place and someone's inside, it tells me that Max is inside that place. A lot of it is still under development. Eventually, people leave a comment at a place. Imagine Twitter. It is as if you leave a tweet and you stick it in the ground. When you walk over it, you hear it.

So like before, it's about experiencing cities:

It's been a long time since I built something. What's different now? AI is what's different. You know what's different? Everyone's on their phones all the time. Back in my day, we made stuff for the streets. You would use your phone, you'd put it away, and stuff would happen. Where are the people making that stuff anymore? All we make is stuff that makes you look at the screen. Let's make stuff that gets you out in the world, where you're not glued to the devices. You're out there doing stuff. Big companies out there aren't going to make stuff like this.

The key idea here is that augmented reality doesn't have to just be visual. Visual also requires somebody to figure out a cool set of glasses that people will actually wear out in public. Who knows when this happens, though I do think it will eventually.

So what Dennis is doing is making something that works today -- with audio. This has been called the poor person's augmented reality, but I think that's selling it short. This is really clever. And once again, it's fundamentally connected to how people live in and interact with our cities.

Share Dialog

Share Dialog

Share Dialog

Share Dialog

Share Dialog

Share Dialog