Tech Thoughts: 2024 in Review - And What's Coming in 2025
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the AI Apocalypse
Hey Tech Thoughts crew!
Remember when we thought 2023 was crazy? 2024 said "hold my beer."
Started this newsletter in September with a promise: no BS analysis of tech, AI, and startups. 24 articles later, and boy, did we have a lot to analyze.
2024: The Year Everything Changed
2024 wasn't just another year in tech.
It was the year AI went from 'interesting tool' to 'holy shit this actually works.'
1. The AI Soap Opera
While we were all watching the drama, something bigger was happening: AI crossed the threshold from 'tech toy' to 'business necessity.'
Anthropic casually raising $4B (because why not?)
OpenAI's "Game of Thrones" season (Team Sam won)
GitHub making Copilot free (RIP coding interviews)
AI agents arriving (hello, future overlords)
Open source models getting scary good
Remember when we thought AI was just fancy autocomplete?
Yeah, those were simpler times.
2. The Great Platform Consolidation
This wasn't just about tools eating tools. It was about the end of the 'tool for everything' era. The market finally said 'enough' to having 57 different subscriptions.
GitHub eating everyone's lunch
VS Code becoming the new Windows
Point solutions dying faster than my New Year's resolutions
Every tool becoming "AI-powered" (spoiler: most weren't)
Pour one out for all the "Figma for X" startups that didn't make it.
3. The Startup Reality Check
2024 taught us that market physics still exist. After years of 'growth at all costs,' reality came knocking with a simple message: unit economics matter.
CAC went from "expensive" to "what the actual f*ck"
VCs remembering that revenue matters
PMF cycles shorter than my attention span
More startups in the graveyard than a horror movie
What's Coming in 2025 (Save This Email to Mock Me Later)
1. AI Development
Why these predictions? Because AI isn't replacing developers - it's replacing tasks. And that changes everything about how we work.
Code generation getting so good, Stack Overflow starts sweating (more)
AI agents handling entire workflows (bye bye junior devs)
Open source models matching closed ones (GPT-5 who?)
Specialized AI making me question my career choices
Prediction: By December 2025, we'll all be "AI prompt engineers" (and still writing if/else statements)
2. Developer Platforms
This isn't just random guessing. Look at the consolidation patterns of every major tech shift - from mobile to cloud. Platforms always win.
GitHub becoming the Microsoft of dev tools (oh wait...)
Traditional IDEs going the way of the dinosaur (unless they get their own AI co-pilots)
New dev paradigm emerging that makes everything we know obsolete
Everyone still using git wrong
3. Startup World 2.0
These aren't pessimistic predictions - they're pragmatic ones.
The era of 'raise big, figure it out later' is dead. And that's actually good news.
Seed rounds smaller than my first apartment's rent
6-month fundraising cycles (because who needs sleep?)
80% of dev tools dying (RIP "Kubernetes for cats")
New monetization models that actually make sense
4. Technical Evolution
Technical Evolution Follow the money: The great cloud experiment is hitting its "reality check" phase.
While serverless makes perfect sense for startups, enterprises are discovering that "cloud everything" might not be the answer. We're entering the era of workload-specific infrastructure.
Serverless becoming the default (for startups and new projects)
Big Tech quietly moving select workloads back on-prem (cloud bills finally hit the CFO's radar)
Edge computing everywhere (until you calculate the actual costs)
Kubernetes remaining enterprise-only (because some lessons are learned the hard way)
Traditional backends making a comeback (turns out predictable costs are sexy)
5. Market Reality
These predictions come from patterns we're already seeing: the market is returning to fundamentals. Revenue, margins, and sustainability are sexy again.
More startups failing fast (but failing better!)
Exits happening faster than tech layoffs
Valuations returning to earth (gravity is a thing)
Revenue becoming the new "AI-powered"
6. The Democratization Paradox
The barrier to entry in tech has never been lower:
AI writes better code than junior devs
No-code platforms actually work now
Infrastructure is plug-and-play
Templates for everything
$100 launches an MVP
Result? A tsunami of:
Micro-SaaS flooding every niche
Creator-built tools
AI-powered products
Template-based startups
One-person businesses
The plot twist? When everyone can build, distribution becomes the kingmaker.
We'll see:
Creators launching SaaS faster than content
Influencers turning audiences into users
Traditional startups losing to one-person shows
Distribution costs exceeding building costs
Market saturation killing margins
Prediction: By end of 2025, launching will be easy, but standing out will be harder than ever. The real winners? Those who already own distribution channels.
Yes, that means your favorite Twitter influencer might become your biggest competitor 😉
The Bottom Line
2024 was insane.
2025 will be insaner.
Is insaner a word? AI says yes.
Let's revisit this in December 2025 and see how many ways I was wrong. But hey, at least we'll be wrong together.
And before closing this last edition of 2024, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone following Tech Thoughts. Your comments, debates, and those "WTF Thiago?" messages make this newsletter worth writing.
TBH, 2024 was just the warm-up for me. 2025? We're turning up the heat.
Expect:
More brutal honesty about tech
Zero BS analysis
Real numbers from the trenches
Controversial predictions
And yes, even spicier takes
Why? Because in a world of AI-generated content and recycled hot takes, someone needs to keep it real.
Let's make 2025 the year of building real stuff that actually matters.
Until next time!
Cheers,
- Thiago
P.S.: Want to bet which prediction is most wrong? Drop your guess in the comments!