Airtable

The entrepreneurial and investor focus of the last decade has largely been centered on increased convenience and consumerism and has encouraged companies to prioritize scaling, with little care for how it affects stakeholders, employees, consumers, and even the environment. 

We have been talking about a shift for some time, but now more than ever, it has become obvious that companies have to take humanity into account as they build and scale in this new paradigm.

The last 10 years of startup growth have been about building and investing in these “nice to haves.” We believe the next 10 years will be focused on building and investing in “need to haves,” and the greatest business opportunities will be found in what we at Wikus Ventures call The Emerging Economy — products and services that have material impact on basic needs and livelihoods and address a core draw on a consumer’s time, money or energy. 

For the 2020s, we are focusing on solving problems within three categories that we believe will have a huge impact on The Emerging Economy: artificial intelligence, web3, and robotics.