---
title: "Top 10 Posts of 2022"
description: "Explore 2022's most impactful VC insights: Web3's evolution, Figma's 50x ARR exit, and startup growth strategies. Key trends from tech's turbulent year."
categories: ["trends"]
keywords: ["Tomasz Tunguz","venture capital","web3","SaaS","startup growth strategies","Figma acquisition","fundraising trends","data predictions","cloud earnings","market valuation"]
ai_summary: "Explore the top VC insights of 2022, focusing on web3 evolution, fundraising trends, and startup strategies."
date: 2022-12-04
lastmod: 2026-07-23
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/top-posts-2022/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

These are the top 10 posts by engagement for 2022 at tomtunguz.com. 

Reflecting on them, I see they clustered on web3 & the fundraising market, both of which experienced a tumultuous year. Selling in the pandemic & post-pandemic also drew a lot of interest.

I'm grateful to everyone who read them, commented, debated, & shared them.

1. [The Web 3 Marketing Stack: The Next Big Wave in Crypto](https://tomtunguz.com/web3-marketing-stack/). I wrote about my thesis that web3 technologies will underpin both a fundamental change in web2 ads by replacing the cookie with an NFT & the tools web3 startups will need to pay for growth during the current winter. 
2. [The State of Web3 in 2022 through Data](https://tomtunguz.com/state-of-crypto-2022-dunecon/). Delivered at DuneCon, this presentation provides an aerial view of the state of web3. About 2.5m active users, about 5k developers committing code, & 70-90% drops in activity from the beginning of the year. 
3. [Figma's 50x ARR Multiple & What it Means for Startup Fundraising](https://tomtunguz.com/figma-acquisition/). Adobe's acquisition of Figma at the highest ARR multiple ever for a company-at-scale stunned the market that was reeling from the macroeconomic shock. 
4. [Deliberately Underselling as Sales Strategy](https://tomtunguz.com/deliberately-underselling/) Borne from a series of Office Hours with Lee Kirkpatrick & Bill Binch, this post advocates for quicker sales cycles with smaller ACVs to drive more predictability & superior NDR. Also, this strategy minimizes [pipeline supply shocks.](https://tomtunguz.com/pipeline-sales-cycle/)
5. [Growth is No Longer the Best Predictor of a Software Company's Value](https://tomtunguz.com/multiple-correlates-2022/). After a twelve-year long bull run, investors no longer value growth at-any-cost. Efficiency matters just a bit more in the public markets. A watershed change that cascaded into the private markets that has led to a significant [bid/ask spread between founders & investors.](https://tomtunguz.com/bid-ask-spread-vc/)
6. [9 Predictions for Data in 2023](https://tomtunguz.com/9-predictions-for-data-2023/) Delivered at [Monte Carlo](https://montecarlodata.com)'s IMPACT summit, I touched on the evolution of the decade of data. More than half of analytics workloads reside in the cloud in ten years.  
7. [Grey Skies in Cloud Earnings](https://tomtunguz.com/q32022-cloud-earnings/) I charted the earnings reports of the three largest cloud infrastructure companies as an index of software buying behavior. Growth rates for these behemoths have fallen in half from 44% on average to 22% in two quarters, underscoring the lengthening sales cycles of enterprise software. 
8. [Fundraising 2022  Where We Are & Where We're Going](https://tomtunguz.com/fundraising-environment-2022-08-19/) From Traction in Vancouver, these slides demonstrated the bid/ask spread between VCs & founders. Investors saw the public markets fall 70% & surveyed founders replied they expected a 10% decline in valuations. Where those two meet will determine the environment for 2023.
9. [Imagine You're a Venture Capitalist](https://tomtunguz.com/reservations-about-reserves/). This posts questions how to manage a venture fund: whether to double down on companies during a changing valuation environment. 
10. [$112m of Market Cap per Engineer](https://tomtunguz.com/programming-languages-web3/). I calculated the total value creation in web3 & divided by the active number of developers to estimate this statistic. The figure has fallen by 80% or so since I wrote it. Regardless, I still believe in the potential of web3 technologies.