And then there were four.
The first round of voting for our business-focused March Madness bracket is done. We’re on to the final four.
Thanks to all those who participated, as we got more than 300 votes. Clearly, some of you had an issue with the selection committee — me — because the favorites got decimated.
A quick recap, I identified and seeded eight of the top business trends this year. Each week, readers vote for the topics that matter most to them.
Let’s get to the results:
Note: The voting percentages are in brackets.
[52.9%] SaaSpocalypse (1) defeats [47.1%] Autonomous vehicles (8): The top-seeded SaaSpocalypse barely advanced with the smallest margin of victory of the four matchups. Still, a win is a win.
[67.9%] Tariffs (5) defeat [32.1%] Prediction markets (4): The most-lopsided win of the round. Not a great showing from prediction markets. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Who could have predicted that!
[57.7%] Longevity (6) defeats [42.3%] Vibe coding (3): The vibe among readers? They want to live forever.
[64.6%] Robotics (7) defeated [35.4%] Private credit (2): The biggest upset of the tourney. Robots are a lot cooler than a convoluted corner of the financial markets, so I get it.
Ok, let’s take a look at this week’s matchups:
SaaSpocalypse (1) vs Tariffs (5): It’s largely a game of “What ifs?” here. Software companies’ stock prices have been hit by the SaaSpocalypse, but the true impact of AI remains theoretical in many cases. Plenty of businesses have felt pain from tariffs, but how things move forward following the Supreme Court ruling is unclear.
Longevity (6) vs Robotics (7): Robots against the search for the fountain of youth. Is this a newsletter bracket or the start of a sci-fi movie? The irony is that even if we do figure out how to live longer, we’ll likely still have to deal with the robots.
