For most of the time I was at startups, a $30M round or a $100M exit was great news. A goal to shoot for. Now the first would be considered a red flag and the s

For most of the time I was at startups, a $30M round or a $100M exit was great news. A goal to shoot for. Now the first would be considered a red flag and the second a failure, and it's not all because of inflation or growth of the industry. Everyone has unicorn fever, which favors certain kinds of startups over others. The result is a glut of some things and a shortage of others. It's a kind of imbalance we distributed-systems folks try to avoid, for good reason. The consequences of screwing it up at the level of the whole industry - let alone all of society - are even more severe.