I'm seeing a lot of commenters blame this on M&A and nothing could be further from the truth. The ZIRP era pumped so much money into startups that a good majori

I'm seeing a lot of commenters blame this on M&A and nothing could be further from the truth. The ZIRP era pumped so much money into startups that a good majority will struggle to grow into their valuation or raise again at anything other than a down round. I can still vividly remember December 2021, when Airbyte raised $150m at a $1b valuation - with less than $1M in annual revenues. Or has anyone forgotten Fast.co burning $120M/year while bringing in $600k in annual revenues and flying their CEO around the world to live like a celebrity, skydive, and show off company merch? LMAO. And these are just a few of the more obvious examples. At some point, founders stopped selling to customers and starting raising and spending VC as their main business. This past couple of months Bolt (one-click checkout) is about to raise at a $14b valuation with less than $28M in annual revenues, or a whopping 500x valuation. Hell, NVIDIA is currently trading at 50X revenues, despite being so important to the AI revolution. No one has learnt anything and the rate hikes have not flushed out all the malinvestment.