VCs are scared when they should be greedy

Isn't this what YC does essentially? YC backed SaaS companies buy each others products, write favorable case studies and use that to convince other enterprises to buy in, and to IPO quickly they raise lot of money to have the market share that commands the multi billion valuations with insane revenue multiples?

Seems like this model is beginning to fail, most YC backed IPOs are now trading in deep red. ex) coinbase

edit: lurkervizzle I can't respond to you since im throttled but this is what I wrote in response to add on to what you wrote in the other comment

this is far more serious than I thought I seemingly just made the connection that YC backed SaaS (or any other accelerator schemes) were essentially just writing cheques to each other and playing whack a mole: You direct your cohort members to send cheques to one SaaS, raise series B & C, push for IPO after making splashes on media outlets (also owned and controlled by stakeholders), which in turn generates more fervor from retail investors eager to get in on the "next" Facebook.

Then you would naturally use these beacons to essentially send more cheques, this time across many tiny bets that they can cycle through one after the other. Some make it to IPO, many don't so they get "acquired".

The more I look at the YC business model and silicon valley in general is that very small group of people are actually in it to build sustainable businesses, since the Uber secondary market successes of VCs that successfully dumped their shares on Masayoshi, the SaaS have become the new "social media opex", where losing $2 to make $1 is preferred over slower growing but consistent net profit generating ones.

By next year I anticipate ton of pain and anger. I took a look at some TC figures and they are roughly 30/70 mix of cash and RSUs. Many of those people are also in debt through real estate using HELOCs too.

What I think we are headed for is something unprecedented because there are 3 major bubbles imploding: crypto, real estate, dot com

Even more crazy is that we had the exact setup going into the new millenia: e-gold, real estate, dot com but the difference back then was that monetary supply was nowhere near as low as they have been in the past 3 years (take a look at the M2 supply/velocity chart).

https://www.pennmutualam.com/market-insights-news/blogs/char...

They were lucky to find a whale like Masayoshi to dump their shares but seems the equivalent of bragging about how you got rich in the early phases of a ponzi scheme with the losers holding bags.

it's also interesting to see the impact of cheap capital on software development trends. for instance to reproduce the same SEO server-rendered site we had pre-2008, we have increase in complexity and costs.

Applications and websites that should be more than fine to be rendered on MVC frameworks are now sending several megabytes of javascript down the wire, as a result our devices have more memories, more computing power, thereby consuming more energy than ever before contributing to the growing global warming crisis that we are only beginning to witness now.

Coupled with lobbying for not regulating personal data in databases connected to the internet thereby allowing a select few giants to essentially act both as cartels to monopolize the arbitrage of the data of everyone on earth. The labor market are also controlled as a result of this monopoly, it feels like the best version of state sanctioned businesses: self-sufficient on its own while gathering data on everyone as the price of privacy is artifically suppressed.

PSA: Data on these kinds of questions is available. Here's the data for Chicago on Uber/Lyft vehicle type: https://data.cityofchicago.org/d/bc6b-sq4u/visualization

It will vary by year and city, but generally speaking Toyotas tend to dominate ride share with Camry usually #1, then Prius, Corolla, and RAV4. However, the long tail is very long and you're about as likely to get a ride in a less cost effective vehicle.

"In contrast with the scenario in 2000, most of today’s tech companies are real businesses."

I disagree that many startups have viable ideas that will generate black numbers and organic growth.

Bold founders have sold startup ideas which are not sustainable.

Ie investment capital have prefered bold founders that could give vision of high future returns wework for example.

A small number of startups will become awesome but the majority wont.

Zero interest rates was a money rocket that fueled startups going to the sky. But what goes up usually comes down eventually with gravity/interest rates.

A small fraction of startups will become super sucessfull but the majority wont. The number of sucessfull probably follows some kind of statistical distribution of which startups is great vs bad.

Higher interest rates will adjust future return calculations that is brilliant from the article!