Jason Calacanis predicted that laid‑off tech workers who band together in small founding teams would become “extremely successful” and the “true big winners” coming out of the 2022–2023 tech layoffs.

What has clearly happened so far:

• There was a very large pool of laid‑off tech workers: over 265,000 tech employees were laid off from the start of 2022 through mid‑February 2023 alone, according to layoffs.fyi data summarized by LETA VC. (leta.vc)
• Multiple analyses show a noticeable share of these workers became founders. Clarify Capital’s “From Fired to Founder” survey of 1,007 laid‑off tech workers found that 63% started their own company, with most reporting higher incomes and improved job security. (clarifycapital.com)
• Other studies using LinkedIn data (e.g., BizReport, summarized by TechStartups) estimate that roughly 13 out of every 100 laid‑off workers across major tech firms went on to start businesses, with especially high founder rates from companies like Meta and DoorDash. (techstartups.com)
• Benzinga and other outlets in 2023 explicitly described a “massive wave of new startups” fueled by roughly 150,000 laid‑off tech workers and noted a jump in Y Combinator applications (5x year‑over‑year in January 2023). (benzinga.com)

However, the outcome Jason predicted is much stronger: that this cohort would be “extremely successful” and become the big business winners of the layoffs over the ensuing years. On that, the evidence is not yet in:

• As of late 2025, reporting focuses mainly on the number of new companies and anecdotal income gains for founders, not on large exits, broad unicorn creation, or clear ecosystem‑level dominance by a distinct “layoff founders” cohort.
• The 2024–2025 VC rebound is driven heavily by AI startups in general, with the biggest funding rounds going to firms like OpenAI and xAI; coverage rarely ties these headline companies directly to 2022–2023 layoff cohorts in a systematic way. (reuters.com)
• Historically, it has taken 5–10 years after downturns for the most successful cohorts (e.g., post‑2000 and post‑2008) to clearly emerge as “big winners,” and those outcomes are measured by major exits, sustained profitability, or transformative market impact. We are only ~2–3 years out from the key 2022–2023 layoffs, far too early to judge that kind of long‑run success at a cohort level.
• Even coverage that originally amplified Calacanis’s prediction (e.g., Fortune in January 2023, which quoted him saying such employees‑turned‑entrepreneurs “could win big”) was speculative, and there is not yet follow‑up evidence showing that this group as a whole has indeed become the standout winners of the period. (fortune.com)

Because many laid‑off workers did start companies, the directional part of his thesis (that layoffs would fuel a startup wave) looks supported. But the stronger claim—that these specific founders would, as a cohort, turn into “extremely successful” long‑term winners—cannot be confirmed or disproven yet. The time horizon is too short and the available data do not track this cohort’s exits or long‑term performance.

Therefore, the prediction’s status as of November 2025 is inconclusive (too early to tell).