Hello 2022! It’s already been an interesting start to the startup year. Elizabeth Holmes’ trial is going forward, Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith has stepped down to find a News startup and evil 2021 took Betty White away from us at the last minute. The last one isn’t that relevant but God, do I miss her.

The last couple years have shown us that we can never really predict what’s going to come. But I’m going to do it anyway, here are (some) of our startup insights and predictions:

Events avalanche?
Now, there’s no guarantee that COVID-19 will vanish in 2022. However, we can hope that the severity, as well as restrictions, may decrease. As a result, we may see a temporary boom in startups around the entertainment industry. With ABBA’s 2022 virtual concerts going ahead, it promotes speculation of growth in this industry. This would include websites which host ticket purchases or promote the culture industry. Anticipated investment has already occurred in 2021, with Flymachine bagging $21 million in investment as a virtual concert platform.

Time to catch a break
We're crossing our fingers that it will be safer to travel this year, and that means some startups might finally catch a break along with us. In fact, apparently they've already caught a break - many UK travel startups received steady funding in 2021. In the coming year, we're keeping an eye out for Staze, a London based startup with a focus on sustainable last minute bookings. Maybe this trend will continue and even multiply in 2022? Maybe I'll be sipping Sangria in Spain too, in 2022.

Shift in social media?
With the major social media outage last year, the introduction of Meta's metaverse and Trump’s ‘Truth Social’ platform apparently still launching - is this a renaissance for social media? Big social media giants are a competitive force compared to other startup niches. Yet, what about a social network that does the opposite of encouraging us to be online? Citysocializer encourages you to socialise by meeting for events with like-minded folk rather than online. They've also scoped an impressive $1.9 million in funding so far.

So those are some of our projections!* Happy New Year from us at the Work In Startups team, and as always, check out some of the hottest jobs that are hiring below!

*We would advise against any betting on our predictions here.