Review of 2024
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Review of the year 2024
Technology
The biggest tech advances have come in 2024 from SpaceX being able to catch their own rocket with two giant metal prongs to generative A.I that does all of your professors overnight homework.
Through everything, we believe the best advancement in 2024 is the Full Self Driving car.
Driving around in a car is one of the most important things in our daily lives that help elevate our routines. In that routine, the most dangerous thing you can be doing is actually driving and being in the car.
This technology eliminates extra stress that’s caused by driving, therefore your stress level can stay low through high stress moments.
It’s easy to travel to another state without hesitation using a self-driving car.
Hop in a car and prompt it, “Take me to to the Grand Canyon” and it rolls you to the Grand Canyon while your family enjoys road trip jams and snacks.
There still are some restrictions like having to toggle a sensor on your handle from time to time but for now, but the technology remains very safe as in, it does not abruptly go wild.
Tesla accumulates insane amounts of data every single moment through every car driven down the street through their cameras and sensors. This could be a question if it is really good for technology and humanity as privacy seems to be less of a thing now in this generation.
A competitor of Tesla for driverless cars is Waymo produced by Google.
They have been taking off recently in immense fashion across big cities in the United States with Miami and Tokyo being their next target.
Residents and visitors of those cities have seen major improvement in the taxi services while saving money due to increased competition. Between Uber and Lyft having major shares, now Tesla and Google are looking to generate extra cash on the side.
This is my personal experience using Google’s Waymo.
Tl;dr I personally love the service that Google is providing and prefer this way of transporting over having an actual driver in most situations. The only problem with human-less technology is the immediate action you are not able to take. Everything needs confirmation and affirmation. Without those two nothing can be changed, and quickly getting off the tracks is hard for technology. Also humans sometimes just need a person to talk to that was unexpected, that is where Uber can win as the autonomy market grows away from their hands.
The way of Waymo
The best part about having a waymo is that what are you able to do with convenience. Uber and Lyft already had a business plan of having people easily transport from point A to point B. Waymo has gone up the convenience and upped it with comfort. With the comfort of just you and your friends you can have a delightful conversation without having to hold back because there is a driver you have to be careful about. Waymo tells us they do not have any voice recording in the car but they do have cameras in the car. Everything is the same as an Uber but with just a driverless car. The share of Waymo will keep going up in the taxi business and it will be interesting how fast they can expand all over the world for autonomous driving.
Although autonomous driving isn’t really cared about in the usual conversation we have within our daily lives, the technology is improving by the second. Everything is becoming cleaner, safer, and reliable. It is only a matter of time before we see a huge adoption in this technology, I would love to compare this to the phone when everyone switched over to a smartphone. You are capable of doing so much more with the new cars, you don’t have to think twice about being in a bad mood stuck in traffic. This generation can just sit back, listen to music and enjoy life as it is in front of us while we are driving.
In 2025 I look forward to having a deep dive into the next technology that a lot of the big companies are stepping their foot in, AR. The technology built into glasses has been a small technological advancement since Google first announced their Google Glasses. Snap has been trying to develop the best AR glasses yet, just to have another product not adopted by major consumers. They are still currently developing their newest “Spectacles” that try to give an edge to the consumer for their daily activities. The only problem currently with the AR glass market is that it's still just too bulky. Compared to a decade ago there are so many possible things we are able to do with the glasses. Talk to an A.I assistant, ask questions, AR features, take video/camera. The software isn’t perfect but there are sets of them that you can utilize as soon as they come out. The only problem everyone seems to have is they still look bulky and dorky. It looks from the outside like I’m a major “geek”.
Meta also announced some AR glasses this year in their event. They do seem bulky like the Spectacles but seem more relaxed and casual. I really doubt that the apps created there are very functional yet but the movement towards AR glasses are moving and the seat for the king of AR is still up for grabs.
I still believe Snap is the King of AR and they have been producing it for awhile now, they just need to prevail their presence onto the throne.
Finance
In 2024, the stock market boomed from its looming days after the pandemic back in 2020. Most of the major tech stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 majorly to prove that technological advancement is coming quicker than most people here are anticipating.
In stocks, Palantir had to be one of the most dramatic rises in this decade ascending its presence to the general investor revealing its platform and advantages in A.I and structuring an idea around it. Although
Palantir is giving the best dramatics experience without this one company, I don’t think it would have been as big as it is today. That company is, of course everyone has already guessed it, Nvidia. This company has blown through the roof in terms of its valuations across almost every investor. There was not a day in the market where you didn't really care about the price of Nvidia.
Another stock that had a huge uprising was Carvana making the p/e ratios in the 26k.
This means the value currently holded to this company is 29 thousand times of what they are currently earning. I have never seen this type of number, it seems like a typo but it is not. This is extremely insane, it is interesting if the stock is able to keep up or bust in the following year.
One of the most talked about stocks that underperformed this year was Intel. This used to be a value dividend stock that has collapsed under its feet even after billions in numeral federal aid. The biggest reason for its collapse is the unbearable momentum of the computing world has left its competitive advantages to its shadows. It almost looks like a Blockbuster Netflix type of comparison with Intel, and Nvidia/AMD. Its usefulness as a company has not been up to par with other emerging companies. The only hope Intel has from now on is the fabrication that they are currently building in Arizona, U.S ready to produce silicon chips in 2025. It will be interesting to see if it will be able to revive itself and become on par with Moore’s law or turn itself into the next Blackberry, becoming majorly irrelevant.
Bitcoin is becoming the center of the wall street as giant hedge funds and companies are racing their way to buy the most Bitcoin they are able to safford. A guy from a company called Microstrategy became really popular in the Bitcoin community as he keeps preaching the advantages and the meaning to Bitcoin in Podcasts or even to huge corporations like Microsoft. Michael Saylor and Microstrategy has announced a three year plan of raising 42 billion dollars to buy Bitcoin. This is an insane amount of money a single corporation is willing to shell out to taste even more of the digital gold. Blackrock has made an ETF that follows the Bitcoin, allowing for people to buy Bitcoin in their retirement funds. This has allowed more traditional money to pour into the cryptocurrency, bouncing the valuation of a single coin to 100,000 up from 42,000 in January 2024. This is making Bitcoin more and more solid as an investment asset that is gaining attention of ordinary people and institutions.
Music
In the ever changing catalogs of music, the top spot is a hard choice to choose as ever. We had major beefs from our favorite hip hop artists, we have had newer artists merge on to the market and try to make a name out of themselves.
The Artist of the year will go to Beltran with his incredible song of “Smack Yo’”.
The trend has caught on Ticktok with individuals showing their true skills to this song.
Go listen to it once to see the effect of your body taking over for the joy of dancing.
Personally I have listened to “Nocturne op9 no2” by Chopin the most information provided by Spotify wrap.
The soothing sound that speaks through the bright night shown by the moon.
Fashion
The fashion trend is an interesting one as there is no one single pinpoint of a trend that just took over everything. The biggest thing I’ve seen transition is the peak adoption of a bell bottom pants, more joggers and sweats have been introduced, a comfortable yet sharp looking style is still trending into 2025.
The biggest company that has taken these categories and made them their priorities is LuluLemon. This athleisure brand is a company that has been working to scale its business back up for the last year.
This fashion leading titan is currently leading all of the attributes of what a fashion brand wants to become and what a simple fashion can make a lot of money for the company.
The biggest thing I see them do different from any other company is the amount of new products they are able to come out with. Every single week LuluLemon does an exclusive drop on their app only shoppable by their members, which is just a free signup. Every single week there are new drops from their manufacturers, and they’re not even bad drops. They actually take time into their designs and creating process to create products that have reputable qualities. Every drop seems like there's going to be something new and you look forward to Tuesday of every week.
The other dominating part they are able to do is just keep retention of their customers on the app. The amount of time you are invested into the company once you have bought into them is the most significant asset they are currently able to allocate. More screen time on their app means more chances of them actually checking out their abandoned carts into having them shipped right to your doorstep with free shipping on all orders, for members only of course.
While every single week they have new designs, new photoshoots, new aesthetics, the big advantage that LuluLemon has over other clothes manufacturers/sellers is the amount of discounted items they have. The sheer volume of being able to go to the sale page and endlessly scroll through their clothes and descriptions can be one of those times in your life where you can just feel relaxed but able to keep exploring new barriers with a single flick of your finger. It is insane just how long it takes me from going to the very top of the sale page to the very bottom.
On top of the sale that they already have with their slightly overpriced items, they also partner with online deal brokers like Rakuten and CapitolOne to create unique discounts for customers to explore further into their collection.
Check it out (US only):
Being able to uniquely attract new customers returning to their original app is a very new idea to the fashion world. I believe no other company has successfully had their customers keep hanging around in their app. A retention that is trying to be donned by the biggest tech companies in the world(Apple, Facebook). A athleisure fashion brand is competing towards the hearts of individuals, men and women take time out of their lives to take a look into this app to find their shiniest match or their money saving luxury. The experience keeps lingering into your mind as the day goes by. Sometimes checking new deals, learning the item you have had in your cart for weeks goes out of stock or having a final look of the clothes after not buying it for the 5th time. The experience is something new that we consumers have not had with fashion brands. The closest that comes to my mind is either h&m or Uniqlo but both of those brands only carry a messy brand feature that doesn't allow them to explode in the digital world. The price point and the luxury of clothes you get from LuluLemon does not compete with any other brand except for this one brand that became hot in the market this year.
The rise of alo
In recent days, a small brand called alo has started to emerge on to the market of leading athleisure brands. Alo also has an app where you can spend your time looking for your daily loungers or athletic fashion. They have relatively good items for a smaller brand and some staples you can always get back to. The user experience is similar to what LuluLemon has already created but the niche and the chicness of this brand stands out among celebrities and people who want to be comfortable. It is definitely a competitor of what LuluLemon is but lacks in some departments like their item refresh rate and the motivation of the creator team.
What alo needs
The style of alo is extremely unique, almost flawless. It captures attention of what freedom can become, and the style of what low key luxury feels like. The product they have is extremely well structured, the only problem is how they are able to continue becoming a niche brand or scale the brand into an actual business to be trading in the stock market like what LuluLemon is currently doing. If they are able to keep up with the pace of the needs of the customers, the accounting team might need to look for more people to hire as the brand is there to stand out without even really trying.
How they can keep making new designs, product photography, and selling seamlessly to keep the ball rolling is a great question that needs much attention. The number one solution is looking back into your supply chain to take out any unnecessary solutions you don’t need and to implement solutions that will smoothen the process. The biggest problem fashion brands get caught up with scaling up like this is that their cost keeps going up as the material declines. LuluLemon has been suffering online comment hate with the decline in the quality of their products in the last 10 years. If the company is able to take this solution to a good business practice, their brand name might overcome LuluLemon in the next 5 years.
It will be interesting watching their moves in 2025.
Culture
Overall the culture is trending to be relaxed competition with strength for each of their own.
The individual market signals great strength into what keeps surviving in this world.
You keep what you like with your wallet, quality will always conceive quantity into its hands.
Never has it been easier for individual people starting their businesses and ideas in the world.
Prior to this, a lot of capital was necessary to build a solid business on the corner of the street.
The street now is digital, and it is anyone's game to stand on the road of Manhattan, New York.
It is now time to build your creation to attain an income while solving issues and bettering the world on some time you would have spent consuming content on the internet.