Last Wednesday evening I was fortunate enough to attend the 19th Annual Churchill Club (USA) Top Tech Trends event at the Hyatt Regency in sunny Santa Clara. With an impressive turnout of over 500 guests the panel certainly didn't disappoint as they debated their predictions of tech developments that will be realised in the next 5 years.

THE PANEL

• Mike Abbott, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

• Steve Jurvetson, Partner at DFJ

• Rebecca Lynn, Cofounder & General Partner at Canvas Ventures

• Sarah Tavel, Partner at Benchmark

• Hans Tung, General Partner at GGV Capital

Moderators:

• Quentin Hardy, Head of Editorial at Google Cloud

• Mike Perlis, CEO at Forbes Media

THE PREDICTIONS

1. Redefining Education from the How to the What
   The ability to consume educational content via different channels will both stretch both how children learn and how our children will learn. Through the mental teleportation via VR, classroom experience will shift towards democratising access to virtual travel, global historical sites and novel experiences. Traditional classrooms to will focus on community and team oriented projects. Traditional intellectual endeavors (IQ) will happen virtually and online, while the importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) will be the primary focus of development through physical interaction.
   [Mike Abbott, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers]
   

2. The Revival of Voice
   The multitouch screen UI finally cracked the code for smartphones. Major breakthroughs in voice will vastly broaden the compute fabric of the world.
   [Steve Jurvetson, DFJ]
   

3. Preventing the Plague
   Last year, 2 million people in the US were infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In the next 5 years, we will see a rise in microbiome engineering to create therapies to fight antibiotic resistance and save lives.
   [Rebecca Lynn, Canvas Ventures]
   

4. A Startup With IPO Prospects Will Start as an ICO
   Initial Coin Offerings are like the next Kickstarter – an emerging ecosystem that becomes the springboard of a new wave of startups. In the next five years, we’ll see a startup whose initial capital was funded entirely by an ICO heralded as the first ICO to IPO.[Sarah Tavel, Benchmark]
   

5. Food Production will be Revolutionised Globally
   With 7 billion people on the planet and the high cost of certain foods like beef, Indoor Farming, new plant based foods are emerging. Scalability not adoption is the key 5-yr test.
   [Hans Tung, GGV Capital]
   

6. Rise of DNA Applications (DA) Due to Low Cost Sequence
   The radical decrease of the cost of genomic sequencing will enable superior diagnostic tools that will trigger a dramatic shift to proactive from reactive medical treatments improving patient care and reducing health care costs. Cancer detection will be detected at the initial cancer cell development vs tumour development. Discoveries with our microbiome will revolutionise medicine as we shift from deploying a WMD, to our gut, to gardening our intestinal flora. Rise of the smart toilet! As people live longer due to the discovery of how we can maintain our telomere length, more services and advancements will be focused on enabling robust and thriving lifestyles. From novel social networks to simulated human connections in VR, ageing will be redefined.
   [Mike Abbott, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers]
   

7. The Deep Edge: The Embedding of Inference Engines / Neural Nets / Tiny Brains in Everything
   Couple some local intelligence to each sensor and the internet of things becomes the sensory cortex of the planet.
   [Steve Jurvetson, DFJ]
   

8. Breaking Up is Hard to Do
   Trump will bring antitrust suits against Amazon, which will lead to a significant weakening of online megastores and a rise of direct-to-consumer companies. And Trump won’t stop at Amazon…
   [Rebecca Lynn, Canvas Ventures]
   

9. A Billion-Dollar Outcome will be Built on Understanding Our Microbiome
   We have millions of organisms living in and on our bodies that we’re only now starting to understand. In the next five years, a startup will emerge that will not only help us understand our own unique ecosystems, but also how to optimise it. The company that does will have a billion-dollar+ outcome.
   [Sarah Tavel, Benchmark]
   

10. Retail Stores Will Become Showrooms and VR Experiences
    Offline retail will continue its steady decline as more customers move to online and toward brands with mass market appeal. Malls will become community service centers offering everything from day care to tax services.
    [Hans Tung, GGV Capital]

THE CROWD'S VERDICT 

You can watch the event in it's entirety on YouTube.