A social media refresh is about to hit your feed, predicts venture capitalist Bill Tai

Social media will face a reset in 2023, boosted by newly laid-off workers from Meta and Twitter who are looking to build more ‘authentic’ platforms, says Bill Tai.

Kitesurfing venture capitalist Bill Tai.

The kitesurfing venture capitalist who was one of Canva’s earliest backers has his eye on potential investment in new social media platforms in the wake of the mass Twitter and Meta lay-offs.

Bill Tai, a seed investor in SafetyCulture, Liven and Zoom, said society had moved away from the social media landscape Meta had created with Instagram, and the world was about to undergo a “reset and refresh”.

“As we know it, the structural changes to the data collection of companies like Facebook, as governments and society are repulsed and have come down on that, is going to open the door to newer methods and less tarnished companies,” Mr Tai said.

“I think the massive lay-offs that are occurring at places like Twitter and Facebook are creating fertile ground for the creation of hundreds of new interesting ­companies.”

Mr Tai, a Silicon Valley veteran, said the world had now moved past the glorification of only the best moments of a person’s life.

“After the creation of Facebook and the move towards Instagram, social media started to really become too dressed up, too artificial and too much of a display of rare peak moments that are masqueraded as your real life,” he said.

Asked about the kind of platforms that might take off, Mr Tai pointed to French social media platform BeReal.

“BeReal is a great example of a shift in thinking or a shift in what social media represents,” Mr Tai said. “I think BeReal is an example of society’s wish to return towards a more authentic experience.”

Asked about his predictions for the technology sector in the year ahead, Mr Tai said start-ups would continue to struggle to raise ­capital.

“Capital is going to be harder to access for several years,” he said. “Companies and their backers are going to be working out problems or problem companies for a couple of years.”

Bill Tai says laid-off Twitter and Facebook employees will re-emerge in 2023 on new and better platforms.

Working out those problems would distract some from innovating, and he said those that were able to raise capital in the current market were the start-ups to keep an eye on.

Mr Tai founded the West Tech Fest on a whim 10 years ago after he was enticed to travel to Perth by Larry Lopez to speak at university tech event Univation by the prospect of good waves. The kitesurfing enthusiast obliged.

“I spent the week hitting Lancelin Beach, Cervantes Beach, Margaret River, Flinders Bay, Wood­man Point and Leighton Beach and concluded the week with a little talk I did at Curtin University that led to the creation of a mobile app competition, the Western Australia App Awards,” he said.

A year later, joined by a group of kite boarders in the tech sector, he met Canva founder Melanie Perkins at the awards. He then became one of the earliest backs of Canva – valued at $36.8bn in July.

“When I came here to speak at Univation, I realised that we were at a point in time where anyone could start a tech company anywhere in the world,” he said. “I was looking at the people who had shown up for Univation and I thought, you know, maybe someone here is going to go back to the room and code something up.”

The difficulties start-ups have had in trying to raise capital this year would last not only for next year but for several years, Mr Tai said. Those that managed to squeeze capital out of closed wallet investors would be the ones who succeeded in the long term.