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What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

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Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I would say that a crash is when the market shifts to being illogical towards the negative side, where even seemingly good companies are struggling. I wouldn't call it a crash if there is positive irrationality.

Nobody will want to even mention metaverse if there is a crash

Well I'll go on record predicting the opposite. Meta is an advertising behemoth and has taken a very big bet on metaverse, they can ensure unlimited good press for their baby, especially if their real customers aren't buying as many ads as before.

I can see it now: "Life sucks because of the crash? Move to the Metaverse!"

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#82

It doesn't look like YC (CRUD apps, IT-related, SV-related) It looks like battery tech, energy tech, commercial space, housing 2.0, water tech SV is done, but had an awesome run

What sort of water tech do you predict we'll see, cheaper desalination? I thought sanitation was a pretty mature technology.

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#83

It doesn't look like YC (CRUD apps, IT-related, SV-related) It looks like battery tech, energy tech, commercial space, housing 2.0, water tech SV is done, but had an awesome run

What sort of water tech do you predict we'll see, cheaper desalination? I thought sanitation was a pretty mature technology.

Anything that lets a city run on much less water than it currently does...for example, better leak detection tech

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of water tech do you predict we'll see, cheaper desalination? I thought sanitation was a pretty mature technology.

Anything that lets a city run on much less water than it currently does...for example, better leak detection tech

I see. BTW, it looks like whatever caused your old account to be deleted carried over to this one, I'm only seeing your comments because I have my showdead on.

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your attitude isn't unique, I'd describe it as "It's not a crash until the people/companies I consider fraudulent get destroyed." I hear it about some crypto investors in particular. There's a lot of people who basically consider recessions cosmic justice and want a cleansing fire to reign down on certain entities/people they despise. I propose: that's not what a recession/crash is.

I would assume in a real crash, especially if we're comparing it to the 2000s tech crash, someone must get destroyed. I personally think companies that can't even make a car drive for a demo, something most at home diy ev hobby builders can do, and also lie about it, probably would go first in a crash. You propose that's not what a crash is. What is it then? And when can we say it's as severe as the early 2000s crash…

I just think of a crash as a sudden drop in asset values, we've seen that so far. A recession I think of as negative GDP growth for a couple quarters at least (i know i know but this is a reasonable definition and you know it) which we've also seen so far. So this is a crash/recession. It doesn't mean it will necessarily wipe out X. I don't know why it has to be as severe as Dotcom or Housing crashes. Doesn't seem to be a requirement to me. It has been incredibly severe for unprofitable tech companies looking for VC funding to keep them going indefinitely at least.

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't think it's that simple. pretty much every asset class posting shitty returns this year, hell even bonds are in a bear market. so institutionals are gonna look at other managers and see a bunch of red and not necessarily stop alt allocations. it's also relevant that you can't just ask for capital back as an LP. it's committed to a fund. you can not commit to another one but the price of much greater returns in…

Surely 'all asset classes' can only drop relative to some exception, where is everyone taking their money? I know we have significant inflation, are people going into cash despite it?

Doesn’t take much volume to affect the spot price and in turn affect the value of everyone’s portfolio.

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#87
post #79
post #42

Hm. Thing is as profitable big tech companies get larger and the TAM of tech sectors grow it makes some sense that early stage valuations would increase. This is both because there is more opportunity for a company to scale, but also because when you have several trillion dollar tech companies out there happy to acquire innovative tech companies then multi billion dollar exits become much more feasible. Companies lik…

To comment on the statement: "Companies like Microsoft are making close to $100b a year today and they have to put that money to work somewhere" They'll make stock buybacks, and they'll pay out dividends, far less risky to their stock price and long-term management incentive schemes than most value destructive large acquisitions.

A little late, but this is only somewhat true. Stock buybacks only make sense if the stock is cheap to fairly valued. You need to think of buybacks in terms of a return on equity. If a company spends $10 billion buying back stock of their overvalued company which later falls 50% in value then that company is allocating capital extremely poorly. Companies should decide whether to buy or sell stock depending the company valuation. Tesla is an example of a company which has made some incredibly smart decisions from a capital allocation perspective not from buybacks, but by issuing stock when their stock is high.

That's not to say companies won't do buybacks though, just that they have a duty to shareholders not to blindly buyback their own stock if they believe they could allocate that capital better with an acquisitions, etc. At a time like this when unprofitable, yet very innovative companies have lost a lot of value relative to big tech companies like Microsoft and Google I'd argue that they might be better off allocating that capital more towards acquisitions than buybacks.

This is also why I don't really understand why shareholders of Apple support their current buyback program. Given their stock trades at a near record-high valuation both absolutely and relative to the market large buy backs makes very little sense from a capital allocation perspective. Although I guess they would argue there is literally no where else to put those billions of dollars. Still, that doesn't mean it's a good thing for shareholders, just that they're now forced to allocate capital poorly given their size.

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah and basically nobody wanted it, which implies that things are gonna get worse.

Or that Citrix was overextending itself.

its not just Citrix but corporate bond liquidity was highlighted in 2019 then the pandemic happened and everybody just glossed over it. now the pace of liquidity crunch across all corporate bonds is picking up as rates pick up.

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

checkout the citrix bond situation. unable to raise targeted goal through issuing corporate yields. its really scary we are seeing corporate bond yields spiking and liquidity drying up. if a legitimate large corporation is having trouble raising money, its a huge red flag.

It’s definitely a buyout specific problem; deals that were inked before the Fed’s rate increases have pretty unattractive terms compared to the current market conditions. There’s a supply glut of buyout debt at those terms, underwriting banks are the ones holding the bag.

the thing is this corporate bond liquidity issue is not new. first alarms were raised in 2019, then they printed money like crazy in 2020, and now they are tightening and we are seeing bond liquidity meltingdown.

theres a very real chance that 10% yield will spike further and downgraded

Re: What Does the Post Crash VC Market Look Like?

#90
post #46
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you two (@azlyrics, @fny) expand on this - or point to a topical article? When I first saw this @azlyrics comment was dead and I'm wondering what the fuzz is.

Citrix was struggling to borrow $4Bn for a leveraged buyout, they issued bonds that effectively yield 10% annually. That's a massive return we haven't seen forever in fixed income.

The curious part is that even with insane returns, they still struggled to get attention from institutional investors who appear to be a mix of cash and short positions.
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