As 2025 comes to a close, I’ve been thinking about the year the way many of my founder clients do: not as a clean sequence of quarters, but as a series of shocks, reversals, and reinventions that forced all of us to adapt in real time. It was a year that felt like five compressed into one — economically, geopolitically, technologically, and personally.

I. A Year That Refused to Behave

The year began with hope — and hesitation.

A new administration arrived with promises of stability and renewed momentum for the innovation economy. Markets waited for the tailwinds. They didn’t come. Interest rates stayed high, inflation cooled unevenly, and capital remained cautious. Q1 became a study in patience.

Then the trade war hit.

Q2 opened with a global trade conflict that ricocheted through supply chains. Tariffs rose, exemptions vanished, and cross‑border deals froze as companies tried to understand what compliance even meant in a world where the rules changed weekly. Every transaction suddenly had a geopolitical footnote.

Q3 brought whiplash.

A sweeping tax bill — the “one big beautiful bill” — finally delivered clarity on corporate taxes, R&D credits, and capital gains treatment for the next three years. Tariff détente followed. Markets exhaled. And then they sprinted. For three months, deal velocity hit levels we hadn’t seen since 2021. The IPO window reopened — selectively, but meaningfully.

And then the cold shower.

Q4 arrived with gridlock, a government shutdown, and a return to uncertainty. Activity didn’t slow; it stopped.

Even now, six weeks after the shutdown ended, the ecosystem is only beginning to re‑find its footing.

II. What Actually Changed in Silicon Valley

The headlines were loud — trade wars, inflation, interest rates, shutdowns — but the deeper story was quieter: a structural reset in how the tech economy operates.

1. The blitzhire replaced the acquihire.
For two decades, the acquihire was the default soft‑landing for teams. In 2025, it evolved into something faster and more strategic: the blitzhire. NVIDIA–Groq made the shift impossible to ignore. Companies no longer buy teams for optionality; they absorb them for immediate execution. Innovation cycles are now measured in weeks, not quarters.

2. AI and robotics became infrastructure.
2025 was the year AI stopped being a feature and became the operating system of the enterprise.

• Reasoning models matured.

• Robotics left the lab and entered warehouses, hospitals, and factories.

• Agentic systems began executing workflows end‑to‑end.

In San Francisco and Silicon Valley, you could feel it in the air — every café conversation, every pitch deck, every late‑night whiteboard session orbiting around AI. The city felt alive again, humming with possibility.

3. The IPO market returned — with discipline.
Companies with real revenue, real margins, and real AI leverage found a receptive market. The rest stayed private. The bar rose, but the path reopened.

4. Global instability became a deal variable.
Wars in multiple regions reshaped supply chains, capital flows, and risk models. Geopolitics became a standard part of term sheet conversations. Innovation no longer floats above the world; it is shaped by it.

III. The Reset Beneath the Noise
What stood out most wasn’t the volatility — it was the underlying rewiring of the ecosystem:

  • How teams form.
  • How innovation moves.
  • How talent flows.
  • How deals get done.

None of it looks like it did a year ago:

  • AI compressed timelines.
  • Robotics changed cost structures.
  • Trade wars redrew supply chains.
  • Interest rates reshaped capital allocation.
  • And the blitzhire rewrote the talent market.

For deal lawyers, it meant learning new playbooks while the game was already underway.

IV. The Personal Side of a Turbulent Year

Professionally, 2025 was a year of constant motion. Personally, it was a year of grounding.

I watched Adam and Ella navigate their own journeys through college — each discovering who they are, what they care about, and how they want to shape a world that is changing faster than any generation before them. I find myself wondering where their careers will take them in an economy increasingly defined by AI, robotics, and global interdependence and global disfunction. They’re entering adulthood at a moment when the rules are being rewritten, and somehow that feels like both a challenge and an invitation.

There were moments of stillness too — or at least moments of perspective. In one of those moments, I decided to make some lifetstyle changes to improve health. Here’s wishing me luck.

V. Gratitude, in a Year That Required It

To my clients: thank you for trusting me with your hardest decisions and your boldest ideas.

To my colleagues and collaborators: thank you for the rigor, the tenacity, and the partnership.

To my Foley team: you make the impossible look routine.

To my children, Adam and Ella: thank you for the inspiration and the joy of watching you grow into yourselves.

To my wife, Tita: thank you for the love, the grounding, the perspective, and the unwavering support that carried me through this year.

Here’s to 2026. No doubt it will bring its own surprises, its own challenges, and its own opportunities to build something new, or rebuild something old into something stronger. We won’t be defined by the wins or losses, but how we experience the journey