In the future, viruses will no longer cause disease. 🦠😷That’s the big prediction of  BaseImmune’s Ariane Gomes, who says that in the future vaccines will be so good that viruses and other pathogens will not make people sick. We spoke with Ariane last autumn about her background as a ​​PhD in Clinical Medicine from Oxford focused on immunology and vaccine development with 11 years of experience in basic and translational medical research. She is the co-founder of Baseimmune, a company specialising in antigen discovery for vaccine development.Listen to the full episode for more about Ariane, BaseImmune and the future of vaccine development. 

Are AI and automation going to lead to mass unemployment? We spoke to King’s Riccardo Zacconi about his ‘crazy’ prediction for the future, and he said that we are going to have the opposite problem. He believes that big problem in the near future is that, with an ageing population, we are not going to have enough workers.He believes unemployment rates will effectively be at zero for many areas as demographic make it hard to find enough young people to do certain jobs. Do you agree?Riccardo co-founded King in March 2003 and was its CEO from the start, overseeing the company's rapid growth in the global mobile gaming sector to over 500 million monthly players, the company's IPO on NYSE and its $6bn sale to Activision Blizzard in 2016.

Are you reading this on your smartphone?Nothing’s CEO and co-founder Carl Pei’s ‘crazy’ prediction for the future is that nothing will displace the smartphone. Last fall at an FF event, we discussed the trend-driven nature of tech where fads come and go as Carl used VR, AR and drones as examples. But he predicts that 10 years from now, we’ll still be scrolling on our smartphones. In 20 years, he sees technology becoming more seamless and fading into our everyday lives. This is also his mission for Nothing: “crafting intuitive, flawlessly connected products that improve our lives without getting in the way”.In the future, technology will be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, emulating that feeling of …nothing. 

A glass which is impossible to drink from, sustainable diapers and an email paywalls. Here are just some of the business ideas going through the head of Jim McKelvey, one of the most extraordinary entrepenurs we know.Jim was a cofounder and now board member of Block (the $50bn fintech formerly known as Square) also is also chairman of the St. Louis Federal Reserve and founder of Invisibly, a startup backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Science is making MOOOOOOOves to eliminate cow farming! At the FF event in Scotland last autumn, we spoke with Dan Widmaier the CEO and co-founder of Bolt Threads about his ‘crazy’ idea for the future. Dan originally trained as a scientist at UCSF where he holds a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology. With that degree, he went on to create Bolt Threads, a sustainable material solutions company. He and his co-founder, David Breslauer, grew Bolt Threads from a couple of scientists and a box full of live spiders to a category-leading biomaterials platform company that has commercialised two materials, Mylo™ and b-silk™, with greater than $1B in addressable market each.From spiders to cows, Dan’s crazy idea for the future is that we will no longer be farming cows in 20 years. Due to advancements in agriculture and science such as the work Bolt Threads is doing, the cost of cow by-products such as leather, meat and dairy will become more expensive than their vegan counterparts making the sustainable options more popular.  

In the future, there will be no private cars in cities. That’s according to Bolt’s CEO and Founder Markus Villig.Many European cities have already passed legislation to reduce traffic — from London’s congestion charges to Paris making every first Sunday of the month car-free.The move to ban all private car use would provide major environmental and social benefits from a reduction in noise and environmental pollution to a rise in safety. Markus hopes bolt will help make this change happen. He founded Bolt in 2013 as a competitor to Uber. Bolt has since become the first European mobility super-app operating in over 45 countries with over 100 million users.

Currently, 75% of the US and 62% of the UK drive to work*. Now imagine if that commute looked more like a relaxing session in a first-class airport lounge than a dull and stressful experience in a cramped seat. 🚗🧘As the automotive industry and EV technology advances, the thought of self-driving cars becomes more of a reality and less of an abstract futuristic concept. CEO and co-founder of Aurora, Chris Urmson believes self-driving vehicles will displace driving and vehicles as we know them will be used solely for pleasure. During our chat in Scotland at one of FF’s events, Chris draws a parallel between the shift from horse transport to motor vehicles to the shift he sees unfolding.  Aurora is an American self-driving vehicle technology company. Its flagship product, the Aurora Driver, is a platform that brings together software, hardware, and data services, to operate passenger vehicles autonomously, light commercial vehicles, and heavy-duty trucks. Aurora is partnered with industry leaders across the transportation ecosystem including Toyota, Uber, Volvo, FedEx, and PACCAR. * according to a 2022 Statista report https://www.statista.com/chart/25129/gcs-how-the-world-commutes/ 

While on a video call, if you’re boss asked you to open a link, would you do it? If the answer is yes, maybe you should think again as it could be a cyberattack! 🏼🕵🏻‍♀️We spoke with cybersecurity software Darktrace’s CEO, Poppy Gustafsson, at an FF event last year about her predictions that cyberattacks will use deep fakes in live videos. The craziest thing is, these attacks will be happening in the near future as they are already happening over audio. She also discusses the fact that it’s difficult to actually predict the future of technology and that’s one of the things she loves about working in the industry and at Darktrace. Under her leadership, the company has experienced significant growth and global expansion and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2021. She was named CEO of the Year at the 2021 Digital Masters Awards and Tech CEO of the Year at the UK Tech Awards 2021 so if anyone can help keep us safe against these threats, it’s Poppy! 

Is cash really king? 💳 >💵Physical coins have been around for 28 centuries. But that is all coming to an end in the next decades. During a chat at FF’s event in autumn, Cyril Chiche predicted that cash will no longer exist in the next few decades. He has seen this trend of moving away from cash for digital alternatives accelerated by Covid.Cyril is CEO and co-founder of Lydia, a Paris-based fast-growing mobile financial services platform with over 4 Million users and a 30% market share among French Millennials, who use its brand as a verb. Co-founded by Antoine Porte and Cyril Chiche, Lydia launched in 2013. It is one of the most successful French B2C fintech having raised over $160 million in funding from investors such as Tencent, XAnge, New Alpha, Groupe Duval, and Founders Future. He has seen this trend of moving away from cash for digital alternatives accelerated by Covid. From cashless to contactless, what’s next? 

On this week’s “Crazy Until It’s Not”, Lubomila Jordanova discusses her ‘crazy’ prediction that every product and service will have a real cost. What does she mean by real cost?At the moment, the price of products and services do not take into account their wider environmental and social impact. Ludomila gives the example of a t-shirt. Traditionally, elements which contribute to the final value of the garment include materials, production, transportation and distribution (to name a few). But we also need to consider ethical elements such as if the cotton fields are using environmentally friendly substances or the factory’s conditions for the workers.Jordanova co-founded Plan A to do just that: help businesses achieve net-zero with their SaaS platform for carbon accounting, decarbonisation and ESG reporting. All in the hopes of helping these brands identify these ‘real’ costs.  In this episode, Lubomila talks about challenges around pricing environmental costs and ESG reporting, her advice for starting a new venture in the climate tech sector and why ESG is important from a financial perspective.