I'm disappointed that this article is more about job loss in tech at large, rather than a look at what Sherwood Partners actually does.<p>How does one wind down or sell off the assets of a technology company? What percentage of tech companies even have assets in the traditional sense? I can see the value of selling off inventory, machinery, owned facilities, and IP, but I'm guessing that a small percentage of Silicon Valley companies have any of these things in meaningful quantities.<p>Does Sherwood Partners buyout the company for cheap and then make a profit by selling individual pieces? I'm very curious. If anyone knows some of the answers, I'd love to hear!
I am tired of this pandemic being described as a “black swan”. Scenarios with decades of warning, billions spent on plans and agencies to react to them, and several real-world near-misses are not black swans!
It's interesting (although morbid) to speculate about which types of companies will be hit the hardest.<p>1 Anything focusing on AI/ML that isn't directly revenue generating such as sales leads/conversion optimization<p>2 Blockchain<p>3 Consumer non-essentials. Think Tesla and Subscription boxes<p>Industries that should be ok.<p>1 Gov/DoD contractors<p>2 Consumer 'essentials' (Netflix, online commerce, food delivery<p>3 Biotech? (I don't have a good insight into this sector)
This guy just uses these puff pieces to get himself more limelight/business. As a self-professed former pop-music manager, he certainly knows how to market himself. I've seen articles with him as the subject before topping HN in years past, foreboding all sorts of doom and gloom which, of course, never happened.
I totally hoped this would be about whoever the real person that "The Carver" from HBO's Silicon Valley is based on: <a href="https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/The_Carver" rel="nofollow">https://silicon-valley.fandom.com/wiki/The_Carver</a><p>"The Carver" takes bankrupt startups and "moves the carcass to the cloud." Sadly disappointed.
Another article about Sherwood Partners <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/21/the-undertakers-of-silicon-valley-how-failure-became-big-business" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/21/the-under...</a>
"Everything has been hit. I never in my life thought I'd see a black swan," Pichinson said. "This is a black swan."<p>He must be pretty young if he can't remember 9/11.
"He hopes it catches the attention of companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook. Because while the startup world is being shaken, some tech giants are still hiring."<p>Can't help but think of the giant sequoia trees, that are much more fire-resistant than the underbrush beneath them, and whose seeds flourish in a recently-burned forest floor.
> "Well, we used to do two, three to four a week,"<p>Uh, shit. I expected the rate before COVID to be way less. No wonder COVID is causing so much havoc. COVID has simply been the pin that popped the bubble.<p>4 startups a week that just this one firm are shutting down due to no revenue or investment? And not just 4 companies closing a week, but 4 that have enough assets that need a law firm to clean up the mess. What a disaster the start-up economy has turned out to be.
> Silicon Valley has developed a reputation for building up companies at hyperspeed, propelled by mega-financed investment that can result in overnight fortunes or colossal failures.<p>> That zero-sum approach is now being reimagined as the coronavirus pandemic, which has spared no industry, rips across the technology sector.<p>Those are just nonsense words strung together. It doesn’t seem like author understands what “zero sum” means.
Becoming a cyclical milestone. From 2004:<p><a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1666494" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=166649...</a>
Sherwood is not very good. But they are the only real choice you have if you're a tech startup. There is definitely a startup to be built in just helping businesses close properly.
> *”We don't know what's happening, but we do know everything we believed in is changing. Everything we thought to be true may not be true."”<p>This is 2020 America in a nutshell.