'The Unicorn Boom Is Over, and Startups Are Getting Desperate' (bloomberg.com) 59
More than $1 trillion in value remains locked in venture-backed startups with dwindling prospects as the Silicon Valley unicorn bubble deflates, according to a new Bloomberg Businessweek report. Of the 354 companies that reached billion-dollar valuations in 2021, only six have completed initial public offerings, Stanford Business School professor Ilya Strebulaev said.
Four others went public via SPACs and 10 were acquired, some below their unicorn status. Several prominent startups have already collapsed, including indoor farming firm Bowery Farming and AI healthcare company Forward Health. Freight business Convoy, valued at $3.8 billion in 2022, shut down last year with rival Flexport buying its assets at a steep discount.
Four others went public via SPACs and 10 were acquired, some below their unicorn status. Several prominent startups have already collapsed, including indoor farming firm Bowery Farming and AI healthcare company Forward Health. Freight business Convoy, valued at $3.8 billion in 2022, shut down last year with rival Flexport buying its assets at a steep discount.
So because of Trumpflation (Score:4, Insightful)
The trade wars, slashing government programs he can't legally touch and then ignoring court orders and all sorts of other incredibly dangerous and stupid things are causing enormous market uncertainty. Meanwhile companies are happy to use and the old excuse to raise prices anyway. Plus there's going to be zero antitrust law enforcement so expect lots of mergers and lots less competition.
Anyone who was listening was warned about this. It means interest rates are going to be raised. That means companies in a cash crunch will start firing people. That's how interest rates controll inflation after all. We all lose our jobs and we have to take lower paying jobs, blow through our savings and spend less money and that's supposed to reduce demand and with it inflation. Basically taking it out of our hides.
All of this means that there's going to be a lot fewer new companies, a lot less competition and innovation and a lot more price hikes. This is going to lead into a recession in about a year or so. If it's left unchecked it'll be a depression in about 2 years.
All this is because of project 2025 policies. And we have Elon Musk on record days before the election saying exactly that. That he was going to cause a massive recession. If you think it's not going to affect you you're wrong. Their current budget goes right after Medicare and social security. Because that's the only way they can get the money they want for the tax cuts they want.
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Nobody who voted Biden or Harris should get to talk about ignoring courts.
The first Trump administration respected the courts and stopped activities when there were injunctions. This administration is doing the same.
When Biden was ruled against on things like Student loan forgiveness. He immediately sought ways to evade the the decision, continued his policy and boasted about it.
You sir are a Stalinist Prick, that pretends to be a small L liberal, which is true of most of the current DNC leadership. You s
Re: So because of Trumpflation (Score:1)
Our society is fucking retarded. Kool-Aid consumption is at record levels and the only solution is self annihilation, which is happening at an accelerated rate.
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People have been screaming Biden is a crook since 2014 when his son was put on the board of Burisma for no logical reason. We weren't quiet. We were steamrolled by the media and made to look like liars and crackpots... Not anymore though. There are a lot of adults in the room now and I feel like this is going to go public. Pam Bondi was just talking about all this yesterday so hang on! I think Biden and company are about to get un-pardoned somehow and finally see justice.
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stopped activities when there were injunctions
immediately sought ways to evade the the decision
You're treating these like they are effectively different.
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A president ruling by Fiat isn't going to be good for you or anyone you love. But it's going to be so fucking cool right? Right up until you go to the grocery store and there's no food. But it's okay you can blame hundred Biden's laptop and his enormous schlong.
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who Obama tried to put forward to replace him.
Merrick Garland. A centrist selected specifically to be appealing to both sides. Oh, how awful!
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A centrist selected specifically to be appealing to both sides
Thanks for confirming my point. Obama was trying to swing the court more leftward from Scalia, even if Garland wasn't a left wing choice.
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That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I can't tell if you're really stupid or just deeply dishonest.
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Why are you mad at Trump for seating conservative judges? Shouldn't you be more mad that Ginsberg died on the bench instead of just stepping down under a liberal Presidency? She selfishly did what she wanted and now we have a 3/6 instead of a 4/5. Thanks!
Are you also mad at Trump for winning? I really think you should be mad at the DNC and Biden for skipping the primaries then telling everyone Harris gets the nod. How dysfunctional is that.
All Biden had to do was declare in June 2023 that he was not going t
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Explain Stalinism without googling.
The courts rule what on what is legal. (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody who voted Biden or Harris should get to talk about ignoring courts.
Well, nobody should talk about ignoring courts, period. Courts are how we determine what is legal.
The first Trump administration respected the courts and stopped activities when there were injunctions. This administration is doing the same.
Nope.
Vance and Musk say that courts should have no authority: https://apnews.com/article/tru... [apnews.com] , https://www.wbaltv.com/article... [wbaltv.com]
Elon Musk is saying that the courts should get out of telling the President what's legal: https://www.the-independent.co... [the-independent.com]
Trump and Trump supporters agree: https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
And the speaker of the house agrees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
When Biden was ruled against on things like Student loan forgiveness. He immediately sought ways to evade the the decision,
When the court said that his approach to student loan forgiveness was illegal, he modified his program to be one that was legal. This is how the law works.
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People can have opinions... They are not going against the courts though. They will appeal, but in the meantime have obeyed. Trump constantly follows the law and appeals and fights it legally. You are misrepresenting your side here by conflating what people say they prefer and what is actually happening.
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Trump, the convicted felon who has lost lawfare battles along every dimension of his life, constantly follows the law, is what I'm hearing here
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But, turns out he has been doing exactly what he said he would do. So, no, I am not going to ignore what he and his subordinates say because your opinion is "it's just talk."
When Vance says "the president doesn't have to follow court orders," I will take him at his word.
Re: So because of Trumpflation (Score:2)
Re:So because of Trumpflation (Score:5, Funny)
"Nobody who voted Biden or Harris should get to talk about ignoring courts."
What are you going to do? Round us all up and throw us in concentration camps?
"The first Trump administration respected the courts and stopped activities when there were injunctions."
So you say, but they aren't doing it now. An every other administration has done that too, even though you're going to lie about one.
"When Biden was ruled against on things like Student loan forgiveness. He immediately sought ways to evade the the decision, continued his policy and boasted about it."
You mean, just like Trump did with the Muslim ban? Exactly the same, except Biden's actions were to help people, not stoke culture wars.
"You sir are a Stalinist Prick..."
Staring in the mirror now?
"Trump is finally standing up to you and punching back, and you are salty about it!"
Trump is a privileged pussy, as are his DOGE shit followers.
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"What are you going to do? Round us all up and throw us in concentration camps?"
No, we will sit happily by as none of your positions are being taken seriously by the people in charge. The adults have come in and begun cleaning the mess up while the children complain and moan how unfair it all is.
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Free market capitalism as it exists today is broken and unfixable. Neither red nor blue have addressed this. The system was already severely damaged before covid and we were headed down the toilet due to minimum wage increases without cost control. Then covid relief payments ruined what was left. $2 of new unsecured new cash flooded the market in the US requiring massively increased de
You are very (Score:3, Insightful)
As usual +1 insighful on topic!
They're going to Target Americans. Donald Trump has already said it's open season for as many H-1Bs as any company wants as long as they suck up to him. They're going to be firing Americans as fast as they can and hiring people on work visas. Ironically I think you're more secure if you're here on a work visa then if you're an actual citizen now.
There's a few multimillionaires in the DNC but we don't have anywhere near the amount of cash that the Republican party has.
Elon Musk
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There's a few multimillionaires in the DNC but we don't have anywhere near the amount of cash that the Republican party has
OMG. Trump ran with a fraction of the money that Harris/Biden did. The rest of what you're posting is similar BS.
It's why people can't understand how tariffs lead to inflation which leads to interest rate hikes which leads to mass layoffs and recession...
If you balance increased tariffs with income tax cuts, things work out evenly. Eventually, as people buy local products, protectionist policies do need to ease, but when you struggle to even find "Made in USA" on a store shelf, you have a problem that needs to be addressed, and tariffs are a solution. IMO, we need to increase tariffs and tax the wealthy. Too many people are stuck on this idiocy o
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Trump ran with a fraction of the money that Harris/Biden did.
What the campaigns raised and what outsiders like Musk spent are not the same thing. That's to say nothing about the massive right-wing media ecosystem that pushed outright lies and popaganda for years on their own dime.
Of course, you know this already buy chose to lie anyway. Typical MAGAt behavior.
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If you balance increased tariffs with income tax cuts, things work out evenly. Eventually, as people buy local products, protectionist policies do need to ease, but when you struggle to even find "Made in USA" on a store shelf, you have a problem that needs to be addressed, and tariffs are a solution. IMO, we need to increase tariffs and tax the wealthy. Too many people are stuck on this idiocy of it's one solution or the other. Usually, it's a combination of both.
YOU'RE CONTRADICTING YOURSELF! Tariffs ARE the "protectionist policies" so easing them is exactly NOT having them.
And you're saying increase in tariffs AND tax the wealthy -- while starting by saying increase in tariffs and tax CUTS. That's a contradiction.
And since tariffs are protectionist and should be eased, you're also saying to increase them. That's a contradiction.
CONGRATULATIONS! You've spoken out of both sides of your mouth whilst owning your own self. BRAVO!
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I do not like Trump, voted for (and donated to) Harris, but I agree with you that tariffs are beneficial a
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If a tariff makes the product cost more for the end consumer, then consumers will buy fewer units of those now more expensive products. When fewer items are sold, this leads to fewer items created in the future to match the new lower demand. That most certainly does not lead to inflation.
Inflation is to many dollars chasing to few products. Hence covid shutdowns caused inflation. We sent everyone money and all the products were stuck in China or on a boat. People had the money but not enough products to buy
You're responding to a bot (Score:2)
It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen here on this site and I've been here since well before omg ponies! Christ this is right up there with greased up Yoda dolls and Natalie P
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To be fair, the bot nailed it though. Those AC posts really do read pretty much exactly how you would post. I'm sure if you took all my post, the same thing could be done and no one but me and the bot maker would even notice. We all have our styles. Take a 1000 posts and yeah, AI/bot can duplicate that stuff.
And let's face it. We all like our soap boxes around here.
I'd blame Slashdot but not sure the folks running this site could come up with that, though it does help boost the comment count. Sad, we're all
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Elon Musk without a second thought dropped a quarter of a billion dollars (that we know of) getting Trump elected. The Democrats just cannot compete with that.
No fan of Darth Cheeto and I'm not going to weigh in on the rest of the political ranting, but I am going to drop this right here: How Kamala Harris burned through 1.5 Billion in 15 Weeks [nytimes.com]
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I look forward to a DEEP recession. It's about the only way I might have a real chance to get back into the housing market. My job is about as stable as you'll find (essential worker) and I'm literally just waiting for a large market correction in hopes that asset prices finally come back to reality. Typically, when enough people lose their jobs and companies are going out of business, it becomes a good time to buy real estate, if you have the money.
In the mean time, I want to ask you an honest, direct ques
Business cycles are real (Score:4, Insightful)
Tech people have been getting laid off in large numbers for the last 1.5+ years.
Startups struggling is to be expected. It isn't just IPOs not launching like this article is talking about. It;s systemic, expected, and normal.
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It's not normal it's engineered (Score:2)
You won't find a lot of people telling you that the federal reserve is in the business of getting you fired. But they very much are. We ought to be asking why the Federal reserve has anything at all to do with infl
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Regarding the lack of competition, this is the government's fault for the past 30 years. We couldn't even break up Microsoft, which was clearly abusing it's monopoly position, and it's only gotten worse. You can't even say this is a particular political parties fault because the Democrats haven't gotten anywhere on this front either.
Clearly our systems are setup to allow abusive monopolies and so long as they bribe/contribute to everyone's campaigns, it seems to be okay. That's why I consider much of our go
Unicorn? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sasquatch Farts and Unicorns. (Score:2)
As in, the valuations are as mythological as their namesake?
Rumor** has it that a trillion dollar pot o funding was waiting for that special “Sasquatch” to come stomping out of nowhere to (and I quote) skunk fart the competition into valuation submission with a signature teabag move in the funding hunger games, but then an adult walked in on that marketing meeting and made them shitcan that idea and change the name to “Unicorns”.
(I think it had something to do with that whole 4D route marketing wanted to take. No one imagined Sasquatch farts
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As in, the valuations are as mythological as their namesake?
In large part, yes.
Keep in mind that the way you get to a billion dollars in valuation is to sell shares at price m such that m * (total shares) >= $1B. So if I say my company has a billion shares and you agree to buy one of them for a dollar, my company is worth a billion dollars.
Of course venture capitalists aren't completely silly about what they pay for ownership in funding rounds, so valuations aren't completely disconnected from reality... but they are quite optimistic. VCs are making bets, a
Doing crazy reorgs is fine... (Score:3)
Doing crazy reorgs when what is at stake is the prosperity and peace of the entire fucking world is not okay.
the low hanging fruit has been picked (Score:3)
It's obvious that companies are just throwing shit at the wall and waiting to see what sticks.
Voice controlled stuff didn't make the cut to mass market even with a big push. AI is likely not going to meet very many people's expectations.
We've had more speed and storage capacity than most people can use for many years now. Featuritis and forces updates only brings more surveillance. A LOT of consumers are sick and tired of the "upgrade" treadmill, but
Innovation is being killed slowly. (Score:2)
"companies" are out of ideas... follow the leader... I guess put AI in your name and hope you can raise money from greedy wealthy morons before the bubble bursts? It's obvious that companies are just throwing shit at the wall and waiting to see what sticks.
Uh, lets not overlook the elephant in the room shitting on Innovations shoes. The one named “Patents”.
There are more ideas locked away in Patent War Chests than we could ever imagine. I say force Greed holding all that hostage to prove they’re actively using every patent, or be forced to give it up into the free domain.
ENOUGH of allowing Greed to choke Innovation to a slow death while doing nothing with tens of thousands of patents but waiting for a violation to occur. FUCK that stupi
Depends what they're selling (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure what all these startups are doing...but between Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Shark Tank, it seems that nearly all of them fall into one of the following categories:
1. Yet Another Data Harvester
2. Yet Another Mobile App that does the same thing as 101 existing apps, which needs most of that venture capital to market the app (and probably #1)
3. Yet Another Subscription Service (and probably #2 / #1)
4. Yet Another SaaS Solution that's probably just another web frontend on a database (and probably #3 / #2 / #1)
5. Yet Another miracle health / fitness product (and probably #4 / #3 / #2 / #1)
6. Yet Another climate change panacea who's business model relies on either government contracts or some variant of carbon credits
Now, some of these ideas *may* have some new development that's genuinely an improvement over existing systems, and there are probably a handful of startups that aren't pursuing one of these common themes...but it is highly unlikely that these developments will disrupt existing players, or avoid having that secret sauce reverse engineered into the major players.
It's unsurprising that massive sums of money are hard to come by.
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Agreed
"Tech" used to mean tech, processors, memories, storage, networking, etc
Now it seems that the label "tech" is used to describe pretty much any useless idea that kinda uses computers
It seems like it's all enshittification
Re: Depends what they're selling (Score:2)
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On number 6. I'm surprised futurist Elon, isn't already encouraging this via various NASA grants.
For an initial extraterrestrial colony of, say, 50 people to survive you can't just survive on tinned food for 20 years. You'll need to grow crops and support maybe a herd of sheep under a biodome on an inhospitable planet.
Plan for Mars but under the funding umbrella of developing technologies to survive global warming here on planet prime.
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It's unsurprising that massive sums of money are hard to come by.
I am supposed to believe your statement here.
And yet I also believe if a TikTok x Supreme collab happened tomorrow to drop a $99 limited edition pet rock, that stupid shit would still sell out in minutes to the FOMO Generation who was brainwashed into giving themselves their own namesake.
Ironically P.T. Barnum would be a multi-trillionaire today. So what the hell are the other investors waiting for.
When did the bubble deflate? (Score:3)
Googling around (for example [visualcapitalist.com]), it seems like 2022 saw a very steep drop-off worldwide for unicorn exits, likely due to pandemic effects. Furthermore, around 90% of unicorn IPOs is 2021 had dropped below their IPO price after one year. Maybe this bad unicorn success rate is just an indication that the post-pandemic rebound hasn't happened yet.
Another thing is that there is currently an AI boom, at least in the stock market. That AI stock market boom is perhaps draining money from other stocks and making IPOs in general less attractive.
Unicorn Boom (Score:2)
Sounds like the name to an awesome run and gun game I would like to play. See unicorn, target unicorn, boom!
Good. (Score:3)
It's like the early days of the dot-com boom, there were investor throwing money at anybody that could put up a slick-looking web site. That's where we are today with AI. Once the frenzy dies down, we'll start seeing the serious players come out of the woodwork, with real solutions.
On the other hand, careless, clueless investors kind of deserve to have their money burn up.