101–110 of 443 posts
Startups are in way better shape than traditional small businesses. By our very nature, we need months of runway just to keep running. We're designed to weather this kind of storm because "zero revenue" is the default state. Hearing about Bird cutting 30% of their workforce is awful. But it's nothing compared to the thin-margin Mom & Pop, or medium sized private enterprise that had 1 week of cash on hand and ceased o…
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Our board and investors have made it clear they think it's highly unlikely any meaningful funding will be able to progress until early 2022 at this point. Recently-funded or reasonably conservative startups should be able to do okay with that, but ones without a lot of runway are going to be in a really difficult position.
Your board and investors clearly have an exceedingly high regard for their own predictive abilities if they can anticipate the reaction of a specific financial sector two years hence, based on the effects of a crisis that's realistically about 3-4 weeks old. I'm not saying they are wrong. But the premise that anyone has a fucking clue what's going to happen on what timeline is ludicrous.
So I’m curious will property and rental prices drop in San Francisco now that funding is drying up? Can’t seem to find much information about that. For example a friend of mine who was laid off still has to pay $3300 / month for his studio. Curious how long this will last for?
I think its unlikely because everyone knows its going to right back up once this blows over. So demand should hold constant.
Classpass was founded in 2013. Wonderschool was founded in 2012. Can we stop calling companies that age a startup? Or at least stop using them as examples? I mean, the article then goes on to call Airbnb a "home rental start-up". It isn't a start-up, it is over a decade old and has over 10,000 employees.
The term "start up" generally means any relatively young company (compared to companies that are multiple decades old) that's growing rapidly in revenue and/or valuation. The number of employees isn't as relevant.
I personally think reliance on VC money is a more reliable indicator, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your board and investors clearly have an exceedingly high regard for their own predictive abilities if they can anticipate the reaction of a specific financial sector two years hence, based on the effects of a crisis that's realistically about 3-4 weeks old. I'm not saying they are wrong. But the premise that anyone has a fucking clue what's going to happen on what timeline is ludicrous.
It doesn’t matter if they’re wrong. That’s what they think. And if they think that, money doesn’t flow in. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
When you get old and wizened you'll notice the pattern whereby the VC investor types will express the same certainty about everything all the time, even when shifting their opinions 180 degrees regularly and pretending like they've held their most recent opinion the whole time.
I'm sorry for some of my schadenfreude here, but really, so many of these startups are overfunded with way too many employees to begin with. They've often paid top dollar for expensive technical talent in locations with very high cost of living. I can't wait to see a pull back to solid fundamentals. I don't see why a daily vacation rental company honestly needs 240 highly paid employees. One company cited in the arti…
Sometimes it seems a little crazy to me too, but I'm not, like, excited to need to live with 5 roommates 90 minutes away from work again like you seem to be.
Startups are in way better shape than traditional small businesses. By our very nature, we need months of runway just to keep running. We're designed to weather this kind of storm because "zero revenue" is the default state. Hearing about Bird cutting 30% of their workforce is awful. But it's nothing compared to the thin-margin Mom & Pop, or medium sized private enterprise that had 1 week of cash on hand and ceased o…
You weren’t around in 2000 or 2008 were you? Your startup is only in “better shape” as long as VCs are willing to keep funding you. VCs are only willing to keep funding you if they have confidence that you will have a profitable exit.
Startups have had years to prepare, work on their plan, strengthen their fundamentals, and raise capital if necessary. I think the shock is that probably this is a faster onset and deeper drop scenario than most had modeled. Every [1] startup has been thinking for the past couple years about their plan for when the recession would come. Probably hundreds of articles written in mainstream and economic/financial press…
People always write about coming recessions. I could "recession year 20NN" and find someone proclaiming a recession would happen that year. Given someone in the peanut gallery is always claiming recession is near imminent, when are businesses supposed to prepare? Leaving piles of purposeless cash is poor business acumen: it could be put into R&D, expanding operations, or returned to shareholders.
Or put into making the company profitable, or at least not losing money. That might very well include R&D (to develop new products or more efficient ways to produce and distribute those products) or expanding operations (to leverage better economies of scale and have a better bargaining position with vendors).
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> I’ve also found that the best folks in business tend to have rich, fulfilling lives outside of business as well. Totally agree, but I’ve been burned multiple times by startups that see any kind of multifaceted lifestyle as “not fully committed” to the team or company, which is ridiculous. I’ve been so disappointed how frequently this happens in tech.
It’s because the owners are trying to squeeze as much value as they can out of you in as short a time as possible. This might be obvious but owners want as much they can show an investor as soon as possible to make their ownership of the company more valuable in the shortest amount of time, and also often trying to make the amount of money they lose to you as small as possible. I think you probably already know this…