In 2007, many people knew housing prices were out of control. But they didn't fully realize how exposed the financial system was and that banks would fail on a massive scale.<p>Today, there is a debate about a startup-SV-VC bubble but I don't have a sense for who is exposed and what the greater ramifications would be, if any.
It plays out as companies that cannot reduce their costs enough to be operationally profitable will exit the market or be bought for pennies on the dollar. So something like uber getting bought/absorbed by a cab company. Options/stock will be worthless in the dead company. Several VC companies will report large fund losses and investors in those funds, and possibly a LP or two will get out of investing completely. Some folks who thought they were set for life will discover they have to get high paying jobs to support their personal burn rate. They won't be able to and it will change their life, bankruptcy, divorce, suicide.<p>For most people it will be a non-event, they wondered how people could invest in a company at those valuations and so won't be surprised when they lose their investment.<p>It will be really really hard to raise money for a while. Perhaps as many as 6 or 7 years. Companies that depended on new startups like digital ocean will have large layoffs as they cut costs to stay profitable.<p>Anyway, that is my guess. We get to see how it plays out.
Over-valued companies will have to take down rounds - employees who joined late will get their options roasted. A large number of small and new VC funds will get wiped out. This time, the difference is, its the professional players that get hit (VC's, institutional investors, hedge funds etc).<p>Last time, tourist investors (newbies and the lay man) invested in stocks that crashed. Private huge rounds are protecting the tourist investors by virtue of lack of access.
My question is what would be the inflection point for the bubble burst? Would it be one quick event like a failed Uber or Dropbox IPO?<p>Or would it be something like higher interest rates drying out VC funds leading to startups going out of business left and right?
A lot of talk has been going on about this, and a lot of comments start with a few set of presumptions.<p>One presumption, usually left unexplained, is that there are a lot of "unicorns" that will collapse.<p>I am most interested in classifying these unicorns, and speculating which will fall and which won't.<p>Here's my list -- I want your thoughts on it.<p>1) Uber -- will not go down<p>2) Dropbox -- will go down<p>3) Airbnb -- will not go down, unless threat from regulation becomes stronger<p>4) Snapchat -- will go down<p>5) Twitter -- will go down<p>6) Facebook -- will suffer significantly<p>7) Square -- will go down<p>8) Apple will be entirely unscathed<p>9) Google will suffer, but be largely fine<p>10) Microsoft is suffering already. It will continue to suffer, but will not go down.
I propose we change the alleged "startup-SV-VC bubble" term to "cockroach" because it just won't die. People have been predicting bubble for <i>years</i>. Coincidentally, people have been predicting the decline of Tesla stock, and when it drops 30 points they claim, "see!" Please.<p><a href="https://medium.com/@silicondowneyjr/bloat-not-bubble-a90bb9cb461b" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@silicondowneyjr/bloat-not-bubble-a90bb9c...</a>
I imagine that if the alleged bubble burst, VC funded startups and their immediate environment would be where the most damage was/is. A lot of startups would just fail. Employees would lose their jobs and options/shares would be wiped out. Even otherwise healthy startups could suffer or fail from the mess. If a company is worth $200m one day and $40m the next, all sorts of bad things can happen even if they are profitable.<p>Beyond the immediate vicinity of VC backed startup land I don't think the fallout would be very severe. VC funded startups are not really a very big employers in the scheme of things. VC as an asset class isn't a big one either. Since VC investments are expected to be high risk, most end user investors allocate only a small portion of their portfolio to the class. It is expected to be high risk and on the whole it is considered very irresponsible to depend on its success. Even startup employees do not generally treat their jobs as highly secure, so at least psychologically they are prepared to one day find themselves looking elsewhere. They are also generally employable in the much large technology fields that are not directly related to VC money.<p>For an analogy think of the hypothetical bitcoin bubble bursting. Some bitcoin centric businesses would go bust. Some gamblers would too. But I imagine that most people holding large amounts are aware of the risk, they haven't bet the house on it.<p>I think the "systemic" impact would be minimal. The real dangerous bubbles are asset classes like real estate, bonds, blue chip shares and those esoteric but enormous "instruments" and securities. These are expected to be reliable and safe so money that must not disappear goes into them. They are also much bigger.<p>I guess you never really know unless it happens, but I doubt the kinds of levers that make big bubbles so bad are present here. A lender wouldn't/shouldn't be loaning out money to be invested in VC, so I don't think you would have the kind of domino effects that make crashes spread.<p>If it was severe and scary enough with big name "startups" going under, tech stock prices might dip. That might be a good time to buy. I can't see much of a relevance of a VC crash to Google, FB or MSFT's medium term prospects.<p>EDIT: One more - Since VC is a "professionals only" class of investment, we are not likely to see middle class people directly impacted. This means that macro-demand shouldn't be effected much either, except directly by employees losign their jobs and startups no longer consuming whatever they consume.
Recent trends in economics leads me to believe the accumulation of wealth and capital from gains in productivity and technology is amassing into huge piles of cash that want & need to invest in something, so now the question is what?<p>There are other more volatile economic "bubbles" out there to be concerned about.<p>If you're assuming starting a business based on delivering over priced telegrams or selling rolls of quarters at a 180% markup will lead you to your "exit" than okay be afraid of "the tech bubble".<p>Start a real business that makes sense, and the bubble is irrelevant.
Likely the evidence for a bubble
that would be risky for our economy
is the surprisingly large number of
recent
<i>unicorns</i>, that is, private
companies who have a recent funding with a
<i>post money</i> evaluation of
$1 billion or more.<p>One reason for so many unicorns, that is,
such valuable private companies,
is the reluctance of significant private
companies to do an IPO. Reasons
include (A) having to
try to please Wall Street
that has a very
limited view of real progress
for a company and a very short term focus
and (B) the
overhead of Sarbanes-Oxley.<p>But I believe that you will find that
a surprisingly large fraction of
the unicorn fundings are
more like traditional private
equity instead of venture capital.
So, for the unicorns,
the high post money
evaluation may be at high risk
(bubble bursting),
but, due to the deal terms,
the last investor is
relatively well protected and
at only low risk.<p>That high
post money evaluation was just
something out in the ozone anyway,
a long way from that much in
actual cash,
so that, if such high evaluations
suddenly
disappeared, that is, the bubble burst,
then
the effect on the economy would
be minimal.<p>So, why do these goofy late stage
fundings and unicorns even exist? The
companies may want the cash from
the equity funding and not
want to attempt an IPO, and
the private equity investors
see maybe an upside, if the
bubble doesn't burst first.
1. Lots of unicorn corpses. They either get down rounds, fold completely, or get bought for much less than their last round's valuation.<p>2. It would be harder for new startups to raise money. The big losses in the unicorns would then lead to smaller B/A/angel rounds.<p>3. Lots of unemployed people who formerly worked at startups, scrambling to get jobs and the handful of large survivors.<p>4. With money drying up, it would be a good time for bootstrappers or people who don't need much financing.
Mark Cuban made some interesting remarks <a href="http://blogmaverick.com/2015/03/04/why-this-tech-bubble-is-worse-than-the-tech-bubble-of-2000/" rel="nofollow">http://blogmaverick.com/2015/03/04/why-this-tech-bubble-is-w...</a><p>"If stock in a company is worth what somebody will pay for it, what is the stock of a company worth when there is no place to sell it ?"
I think bubble will not burst but it will start to deflate, when bunch of companies with 1B+ evaluation fail to give the investors huge promised returns. This will dry up seed funding and Series funding for startups. Investors will loose their money and series of layoffs at startups. This may impact the growth of big giants but nit sharply.
Lastly, Silicon valley crazy rental could be see decline too.
I think the inherit nature of bubbles means that it's almost impossible to accurately predict the fallout. Sure, there were investors that bet against credit default swaps, but it was still a bet, or calculated risk.<p>If such predictions were easy to make, bubbles wouldn't occur, at least at the scale of the dot com and housing bubbles.
- Huge bubble where startups valued at almost around $1trillion are not regulated.
- They are not required to report anything to public.
- Eventually, VC will need liquidity that may force these companies to go public.
- Once public, they are required to show significant growth to justify super high premium valuation.
- If few of the top unicorns fail to show that growth, market may tank, VCs may loose money.
- VCs who lost money may be more cautious in future but may also have hard time raising capital.
- Many Unicorns do NOT have higher entry barriers or network effects. For instance, why can't same driver serve users from Uber, Lyft & 10 other apps, cheapest for customers & highest paying for driver - an arbitrage opportunity? Or why can't someone list house on Expedia,Travelocity along with Airbnb?
If the tech/ anything bubble pops, what tech companies would be the best to work for preceding this event? Which industries that employ tech workers would be the best to work in preceding the bubble? This under the assumption that getting a software dev job would become increasingly difficult with a rise in unemployment in this sector.<p>I'm a junior developer, so if there became a huge oversupply of developers I think it would be very hard for me to get a new job. This is actually something that really worries me currently. I'm already having a hard time finding a new job, if there was another economic crisis I feel like I would have to leave the tech industry to get a job.
My Guesses are:<p>1- Facebook: Will go bust and be bought by a conglomerate (non IT Group or Microsoft). They will be the "Lehmans Brothers" of the next crisis.<p>2- Dropbox: Likely to go bust. No diversification and a lot of competition.<p>3- Twitter: Will be hurt but can survive,due to appeal to Marketers/News/..etc.<p>4- Google: Will likely drop a lot of products and concentrate on search and self driving cars.<p>5- Apple: Will become the new Microsoft.
Has anyone written a good set of articles about the 1999/2000 tech bubble bursting, and which businesses it affected?<p>Lots of smaller companies, like Redhat, were hit in their valuation, but made it through.
I doubt that it's going to be anything like 2008's financial market crash. VC-funded startups just aren't that important. Housing prices and interest rates affect everyone; VC is just a game for rich people playing with other peoples' money by taking bets on young narcissists with big ideas.<p>So far, when VC flips its products on to the public markets, the markets react fairly rationally and the bad companies tank. Look at Zynga. The market may be overvaluing it still, but it's nothing like the 1990s. Public markets seem to be recognizing shitty tech stocks as what they are. So, we're not at the 1999 level of bubble.<p>Furthermore, the 2001 crash didn't have a major effect on the economy (although it was bad for the Bay Area, and for many engineers). It wasn't the crash, or even 9/11, but the sluggish ("jobless") recovery in 2002-4 that made the 2000s (except for people on Wall Street or in the slowly recovering Valley) a shit decade.<p>So, let's assume that the VC bubble ends. Some people will get hurt. The celebrity engineers who make $500,000 and aren't any good will get beefed. Run-of-the-mill engineers, if they're any good, might drop from $140k to $125k; not such a big deal. The ScrumDrone engineers will have a hard time finding work. Unfortunately, this will also hurt self-taught (meaning "no college degree") engineers even if they are good; the ones who are talented are still in a position of low leverage because "everyone knows" (well, employers know) they're more sensitive to a dry-up.<p>The short answer is that some people will take painful hits-- you're going to have a lot of 25-year-olds who thought they were millionaires, find out that they worked overtime for nothing-- but average people of average-or-better talent will mostly be fine. Bay Area salaries for good engineers might go down 10 to 20 percent at worst.<p>The bad news: housing in San Francisco's not going to become more affordable. First, the people who actually have money (not a half-million from options) are already diversified and less exposed to dot-com/VC, and the foreign money-launderers aren't exposed to it at all. Second, people hoard rather than sell (a steep positive volume/price correlation) when the market "should" soften. The stupid competitiveness around getting rentals (e.g. competitive open-houses, people cutting checks for a whole year's rent) will go away, but rents and prices will stay about where they are.