Companies that make it easier/faster to onboard new customers.
Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
131–140 of 184 posts
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#132Don't invest for the winners in the recession. Invest near the depths of the recession for the winners of the recovery where everything looks like its on a firesale. The problem is of course timing the bottom. And resisting the emotional urge to think nothing could ever recover. The 2020 extraordinarily V-shaped recovery surprised me a lot. Given that nothing financial is really popping that hard and a lot of the hea…
> The 2020 extraordinarily V-shaped recovery surprised me a lot.
Printing and living on monopoly money really helped. Instead of running faster we simply made the ruler shorter.
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#133Any company who’s customer is the government. There’s only one entity that spends money in a recession, and that’s the government. Safest job you could have is one working for the federal government. Everything else is speculative and subjective to whatever is influencing the economy at any given point.
> There’s only one entity that spends money in a recession
in a recession consumers still spend, but they often shift from high price to lower price.
iirc it's a depression where things get really vicious cycle w/o gov't
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#134Related question: which tech products are 'inferior goods' - goods whose demand rises when incomes fall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferior_good
how about things like intuit mint or nerd wallet where people will turn to try and reduce expenses?
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#135Are you asking in the context of investment or job search? The answer may vary significantly based on this.
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#136We're arguably in a recession right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_recession Companies offering free services or cheap ownership of things should do well I think, but any company that relies on subscriptions or upgrades would be hit hard.
Why arguably? I thought a recession just had to meet a certain criteria.
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#137We're arguably in a recession right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_recession Companies offering free services or cheap ownership of things should do well I think, but any company that relies on subscriptions or upgrades would be hit hard.
Why arguably? I thought a recession just had to meet a certain criteria.
> I thought a recession just had to meet a certain criteria.
(1) the actual criterion is “NBER names it a recession, which usually happens significantly retrospectively, and start and end dates are often adjusted after initial determination.”
(2) the casual rule of thumb criteria, which is more objective at the starting end (“a period starting with two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth and ending...sometime later”) can also only be applied significantly retrospectively with regard to the starting point.
So, yes, under either standard, whether or not we are currently in a recession is generally an assessment made on the basis of trying to predict the future.
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#138Anything with solid fundamentals based on a legitimate, defensible USP or captive audience within a sector having recession-proof demand.
Food, drugs and administration.
Add to that deep science and technology ventures that would do well anyway and don't care if it's a recession.
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#139Why has it been a while since the last recession. Wasn't there a recession in 2020 due to the pandemic?
Re: Ask HN: What tech companies/industries will do well in a recession?
#140Look for companies and industries that can pass rising costs onto customers more easily. So typically staples over discretionary. Fuel, food, medicine.
Just have a look which companies did good during corona, or which businesses were not affected by the lock down. Those are the real essential ones, which will be safe in a recession.
Walmart barely had even a hiccup.
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/WMT/
Look at the 5y chart and see if you can even tell when the 35% drop to the rest of the stock market was.