Tech Leaders on the Next Decade: What’s Coming After the Pandemic Pivot
To mark Cloudflare’s tenth birthday, the company hosted a 24-hour series of live discussions with leaders from across the technology industry. The conversations ranged over entrepreneurship, workplace culture, and the evolving role of the Internet. Below are some of the most forward-looking insights from those sessions.
The Globalization of the Startup Scene
Anu Hariharan, Partner at Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, sees a fundamental shift in where the next generation of large companies will be built. While the perception persists that the tech world has reached peak penetration, the data suggests otherwise.
Hariharan points to the scale of the opportunity: the global market cap sits at roughly $85 trillion, with less than 10 percent tied to e-commerce and Internet-enabled businesses representing $8 trillion. Even after two more decades of growth, she argues, that figure should reach at least $66 trillion. In her view, the real mistake investors make is thinking in zero-sum terms—most Internet-enabled businesses actually expand the total addressable market rather than fight over a fixed one.
The Case for Virtual-First Mental Health Care
Karan Singh, Co-founder and COO of Ginger, outlined a vision for mental health care that is still years away from full realization. The goal, he says, is a world where mental health is never an obstacle—an ambition that will persist well beyond the next decade.
Singh is hopeful, however, that a new paradigm will take shape within ten years: a virtual-first care model where patients begin online and only escalate to in-person providers when necessary. For those in acute situations, face-to-face care will remain essential. But for many, starting digitally is a more democratic and equitable entry point into the system.
Flexibility as an Equalizer
Jennifer Hyman, CEO and co-founder of Rent the Runway, is bullish on the long-term impact of the shift away from rigid office schedules. Once life returns to a semblance of normalcy, she expects businesses to abandon the five-day in-person workweek as a default structure.
Technology has proven that work can be flexible and virtual, and Hyman believes that unlocks meaningful benefits for a broad swath of the workforce. In particular, she notes, it will help women, who often bear the brunt of caregiving and household responsibilities, by offering a more level playing field.
Counting on Disruption in Machine Learning
Eric Schmidt, former CEO and Executive Chairman of Google and Co-Founder of Schmidt Futures, warns against assuming the competitive landscape has been settled. The sheer volume of investment in machine learning—from firms like Cloudflare and Google—will yield applications that are difficult to predict.
Schmidt argues that the doomsayers pointing to the dominance of the major platforms are missing the point. A new platform is emerging over which both incumbents and newcomers will compete, and that competition will be broadly beneficial. It will likely spawn significant new companies and will have a wide-ranging impact on society—not just in entertainment, but in information access and productivity.
Making Remote Feel Better Than In-Person
Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom, acknowledges that current video conferencing has limitations. From a pure productivity standpoint, remote work has proven viable, but it fails on the social and mental health fronts. For all its improvements, the technology still cannot replicate the intimacy of a face-to-face meeting.
Yet, Yuan believes this is a solvable technical problem. He sees a future where cutting-edge technologies enable remote handshakes and other tactile sensations, and where AI-powered real-time translation breaks down language barriers. Within the next ten to fifteen years, he predicts, online communication will not just match face-to-face interaction—it will exceed it.
