Exit unicorns, pursued by bears

The article carefully points out VC funding receding even before the pandemic, which is simply accelerating what was already trending. Reminiscent of how 9&#x2F;11 and its aftershocks sped up the dot-com bubble popping, which had already been in motion.<p>The examples of &quot;fake tech&quot;, startups assuming easy entry into markets due to mass adoption of internet computing (via smartphones) and then running into fundamental problems with their business models, and the valuations based on creative accounting also sound familiar.<p>This really is the dot-com bubble 2.0, isn&#x27;t it.

What a wonderful headline; I almost don&#x27;t need to read the story. The economist has always been very clever with their copywriting.

Coronavirus is just accelerating the market correction in startups that was already underway. In the end it may actually do some good to just pull the bandaid off fast.<p>This is just the next wave in the cycle and those of us that have been around a few years know what to expect. Those that haven’t been though this before or are in denial will learn the hard way.<p>Nobody cares about your pumped up valuation anymore. If anything pumped up valuations only hurt you in times like these. Options become worthless and early investors don’t want to take a hit at the benefit of others that come in on a severe (down 50+%) down round. What people do care about is how much cash you have and what your burn rate is. Cash is king.<p>Getting new cash will mean making it with old fashioned revenue and profit. If you can’t do that your days are likely numbered.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;DavUGk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outline.com&#x2F;DavUGk</a>

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.md&#x2F;5d7Kx" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.md&#x2F;5d7Kx</a>

losing money since day one, overvalued, on life support from investors...so Covid is killing those that would have died anyway, just in a week&#x27;s time.

Now would be a good time for every business to take an inventory of all the software services they use and define their contingency plan for each one.

The title used for this HN submission isn&#x27;t the title chosen by The Economist - but it&#x27;s so much better! (And really sums up the article&#x27;s content in a terse manner)

Unicorns are just symptomatic of the decadence of late capitalism. Companies that can only exist because of an overabundance of greater fools who create a short-term &quot;success&quot; from purely trading the inflated capital of a popular but failing startup - totally divorced from its actual business. The enormous prevalence of fraud and reward for failure, of front-runners, bent sell-side analysts, the wretched hive of scum and villany that is Wall St.<p>A better world is possible.

I hadn&#x27;t known Lime had effectively shut down in most markets, although upon reflection it&#x27;s fairly obvious that would happen.<p>(Incidentally, while I couldn&#x27;t get the archive.md link that neonate published to work, either, I could read the full article simply by disabling JavaScript and reloading the page. It&#x27;s remarkable how many paywalled magazines this works with now. It&#x27;s almost as if rewriting an essentially all-text web site to be a snazzy web app that pushes all the smarts to the client side has some drawbacks! Who could have predicted.)