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Hoping there will be a little more discussion on this one. All the talking points in the video are pretty accurate and it's not just an overall industry shift,

Hoping there will be a little more discussion on this one. All the talking points in the video are pretty accurate and it's not just an overall industry shift, the same shift happens within startups as they grow. Small startup = high risk and mostly true believers who are interested in the problems. Large startup = heavily de-risked and people are now joining for the brand more than for the problems. The push for instant hypergrowth seems to have exacerbated this transformation over the past few years as startups raised larger and larger rounds earlier and earlier. This premature funding then drove premature headcount growth which diluted the core sooner. As someone mentioned in the video comments, maybe the non-conformists are now the ones refusing VC money but it's a tough game when your competitors can spend more on marketing in a month than you spend in a year.

christkv 4y ago
They were in school during the Dotcom boom. It was a similar wave of conformists and anyone who had any inkling of doing a bit of HTML joining the fray until the collapse came. This feels like a mini Dotcom crash. The big companies will survive but will shed workers. Underfunded companies will go under, and other companies will scape by with minimal staffing, waiting for the industry to turn around to look for funding. The recovery will be slower with lower valuations and longer time in-between rounds. General and stock comp will probably take big hit.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  > This feels like a mini Dotcom crash The differences this time are the companies are much bigger, but they actually have revenue. What I wonder is how many will go under this time because their only customers were other tech companies.
kurthr 4y ago
Part of what happened was a secular decline in interest rates. Long term (10yr) rates have consistently dropped for 40 years from 1980-2020 down to zero. That makes longer term speculative investments (the discount rate) much more investable than otherwise. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10 Basically, it's the same reason your entire family thinks housing is an investment. Unless, we figure out a way to back to zero and (figure out a way like digital currencies to go) negative this doesn't really continue. More likely, if there is some form of deglobalization, rates go up for the medium term (5-10yrs).

christkv 4y ago

They were in school during the Dotcom boom. It was a similar wave of conformists and anyone who had any inkling of doing a bit of HTML joining the fray until the collapse came. This feels like a mini Dotcom crash. The big companies will survive but will shed workers. Underfunded companies will go under, and other companies will scape by with minimal staffing, waiting for the industry to turn around to look for funding. The recovery will be slower with lower valuations and longer time in-between rounds. General and stock comp will probably take big hit.

dehrmann 4y ago
> This feels like a mini Dotcom crash The differences this time are the companies are much bigger, but they actually have revenue. What I wonder is how many will go under this time because their only customers were other tech companies.

kurthr 4y ago

Part of what happened was a secular decline in interest rates. Long term (10yr) rates have consistently dropped for 40 years from 1980-2020 down to zero. That makes longer term speculative investments (the discount rate) much more investable than otherwise. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS10 Basically, it's the same reason your entire family thinks housing is an investment. Unless, we figure out a way to back to zero and (figure out a way like digital currencies to go) negative this doesn't really continue. More likely, if there is some form of deglobalization, rates go up for the medium term (5-10yrs).