When things grow exponentially, you should probably pay attention. I came across an interesting thread on Twitter that collected some of the fastest growing (or shrinking) numbers across a variety of industries and technologies.
In 1994, Jeff Bezos famously spotted a stat that made him leave his high-paying PE job to start Amazon:
💡 The Internet was growing 2300% per year.
What are the generation-defining stats of today?
I'll post a few to kick things off...
— Steph Smith (@stephsmithio) March 8, 2022
The references for the stats aren't the most reliable, but may be an interesting starting point or thought provoker for more research. I'll repost some of the stats here for easier reading:
- The cost of mapping a genome has fallen ~100,000% over the last 15 years.
- College tuition has outpaced earnings by almost 10x
- Cyber insurance loss ratios (costs + claim payments)/premiums have risen 20% in the last two years
- There will be an estimated shortage of 300,000 semiconductor workers by 2025
- At the height of the pandemic, Americans were saving an estimated 60 million hours per day commuting by working from home.
- Lab-grown meat has exponentially decreased in price over the last 2 years (from $7398/kg in 2019 to $37/kg in 2022)