In episode 746, Rob Walling looks ahead to 2025 with nine startup predictions, exploring trends in no-code tools, search, autonomous vehicles, AI, and an increase in platform risk for bootstrapped founders. Topics we cover: (1:52) – Carrying forward predictions from 2024 (3:09) – Search volume for Google organic SEO (6:34) – Ads in AI interfaces (7:50) – Google’s revenue drops, bootstrapper opportunities (10:07) – “AI” use in H1’s (14:01) – Self-driving taxis (19:28) – Platform risk intensifies Links from the Show: Exit Strategy: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling Your Business Without Regret Episode 697 | 7 Predictions for SaaS Bootstrappers in 2024 Episode 725 | SEO in the Age of AI, Freemium, When Brand Becomes Important, and More Advanced Listener Questions (with Ruben Gamez) LINKLO TinySeed Episode 735 | The 8 Levels of SaaS Platform Risk (A Rob Solo Adventure) If you have questions about starting or scaling a software business that you’d like for us to cover, please submit your question for an upcoming episode. We’d love to hear from you! Subscribe & Review: iTunes | Spotify
Full Episode
Welcome to Startups for the Rest of Us. I'm Rob Walling. In this episode, I talk through my nine startup predictions for 2025. I like to take a bit of time each year to think about how I think the landscape might change in the coming year. And frankly, most of these are around SaaS, but there are a few that aren't directly going to impact SaaS. And so I just said startup predictions in the title.
And predictions are really tough. If you're actually looking ahead and trying to forecast things, no one knows what's going to happen. So take these with a grain of salt. There's at least one of them that I kind of hope doesn't happen for the sake of all the startup founders that I am rooting for. But nonetheless, if I think there's a good chance it'll happen, I want to include it in this episode.
Last episode, I went through my predictions for 2024, and you probably noticed, I think maybe I had a, what, a 30 or 40% hit rate, 50% at best. So keep that in mind when you hear predictions from me or anyone else, that at best, we're gonna be as good as maybe a coin toss.
Before I dive into the predictions, if you missed backing the Kickstarter for my new book, co-written with Dr. Sherry Walling, it's called Exit Strategy, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Selling Your Business Without Regret. You can now buy it on pre-order in paperback form. So the Kickstarter was for hardcover, but if you go to exitstrategybook.com, you can either order an electronic copy or
or a paperback copy and you'll get that in a few months once everything is ready so if you missed it exitstrategybook.com and with that let's dive in to my first prediction I'm going to go through three of them as a group because of these three I made for 2024 and I'm just carrying them through. And I realize that's kind of cheating. So I'm kind of combining these all into one.
My first is that Twitter will change hands in 2025. I think either the debt's going to be called due, someone's going to do a hostile takeover. The valuation is so low, I just think it is inevitable that Twitter will change hands here at some point. And so I'm calling my shot like Babe Ruth and I'm saying 2025.
My second prediction is that no code and low code will get unit tests and version control. So in 2024, I predicted it would be professionalized and I put that in quotes. And then I did a text expander on professionalizing and I defined what I meant by that.
realistically, the fact that no code and low code don't really have unit tests and version control at this point, as far as I know, you know, the tools we use, the air tables, the bubbles, the softers, the Zapiers, stuff gets pretty brittle. And it reminds me of how we coded in, say, the late 90s or the early 2000s. And I do think it will evolve.
So unit tests and version control coming for no code and low code. And I do think there's opportunity there for startup founders. My third prediction carried over from last year is that Stripe will go public in 2025. Not much more to add to that one.
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