Fear and sadness in Silicon Valley
The party isn’t entirely over, but you can hear someone shouting “last call.”
Every couple of months I leave my small Massachusetts town — where most people still shop for their own groceries and drive their own cars — and head for the Bay Area. Suddenly, all of my cynicism and bubble worries are drowned out by the kind of unfettered optimism that only $1 billion valuations (on $0.00 earnings) can buy.See also:
But not today. Not this time.
Since landing in San Francisco on Wednesday, I’ve met with an assortment of senior venture capitalists, bankers, entrepreneurs and crossover investors. All of them have, in one way or another, been involved with so-called ‘unicorn’ companies. As in the past, they are nearly unanimous in sentiment. The difference now is that their sentiment is fear.
The past several years of raising too much, too high, too soon has run smack into a much more conservative investor ethos. Later-stage tech startups can still raise growth equity — and still lots of it — but not necessarily at the terms they were receiving just two months ago.
“This shift is only five or six weeks old, so most companies haven’t felt it yet,” a senior tech banker explains. “But I know of many companies who raised money at $1 billion valuations last year that are now being told that, to raise money now, they need to take around $700 million or $800 million. Probably with some serious structure that protects investors, like ratchets, on top of it.”...MORE
Sept. 2015
Where Are The Tech Unicorn IPOs?
Aug. 2015
Venture Capital: Who Will Buy My Sweet Young Unicorn?
Dec. 2014
Cracks in Silicon Valley’s Billion-Dollar Startup Club: Two Firms Are Proposing IPO's as Downrounds
And many more. Use the search blog box, keywords silicon valley, if interested.
