While I think Mark's article is insightful about macro issues, I have a different perspective on how VC firms should react. I will never forget the partner meet

While I think Mark's article is insightful about macro issues, I have a different perspective on how VC firms should react. I will never forget the partner meetings we had when the bubble collapsed in 2000. The lessons of the years that followed immediately after the collapse always stuck with me. First of all, we are long term investors (VCs as a whole). I saw numbers recently that the average time from Series A to exit was up to 8 years. Managing through that entire lifetime means that a Series A investor that is looking at the public markets is looking in the wrong place. What the public markets are going to be doing in 8 years is the real question, and it is an unanswerable one. So we all have to build companies, real companies. An exit should be a pleasant interruption of the process of building a company. Building a company means planning for good times and bad (as a company and as a funder), not having to suddenly panic because the stock market went down. The only companies in my portfolio that need to react quickly are those in registration for IPO or in discussions with public acquirers whose stock prices just dropped. Otherwise, it's steady as she goes. One note I will make though, is that VC valuations do seem to track (irrationally) the public markets. After a crash is often a good time to invest, particularly if other funds do pull back, and competition is diminished.