You seem to be implying that a "crash," which I'm taking to be defined as something that drops the stock market and overall economy, is caused by these startups

You seem to be implying that a "crash," which I'm taking to be defined as something that drops the stock market and overall economy, is caused by these startups. The widespread Mainstreet investors are not invested in startups like they were in the IPO-fueled dot-com bubble. It is largely accredited LPs going through VCs privately. Yes, there may be other economic factors that could cause a crash, but at this point, I think we would need to see an unprecedented black swan event to royally shake investor confidence. The election outcome could be an interesting one as markets tend to go a little crazy during election years. Plus, I'm curious how many people VC-funded pre-revenue startups in the Bay employ. If they were to all crater overnight, what impact would that have on the housing market given the other massive tech companies with strong revenue models and billions in the bank to weather anything? My assumption is they hire and locally employ orders of magnitude more people.