Is there a single YC company which is doing good in public market? It seems like all YC companies are net loss making investment for the retail investors have they bought the stocks in IPO.
YC was peak funny money. I work extensively with startups and it was increasingly apparent in the last few years that the main objective of the startup was to raise funding, not to build product or deliver value.
The number of "unicorns" that will be around in a decade is likely in the low double digits at best.
What tech company that IPOed in the last 5 years is even above IPO price at the moment? This is not unique to YC, but maybe unique to the pump and dump VC scene that was cultivated in this bull run.
The decade plus of easy money from the government is ending. Unsure but we might start seeing a major cull of all these unprofitable companies that have been propped up.
I don’t think it’s just about the easy money. I think it’s about confidence and a bubble. Crypto is the biggest bubble of all, and everyone knows a bubble is going to pop. It lasts until the big guys lose their nerve and start pulling out, which is what we’re seeing now. They’re losing their nerve because they can see the economic tsunami coming from a variety of directions.
I’m concerned that the decadence of the west has now led to a series of get rich schemes that create bubble after bubble, providing successive paper booms that are bailed out by governments. The problem is that the consequences of each bail out accumulates, so this broader cycle seems itself unsustainable.
Western economies need to get back to real wealth creation. A good test of that is - can your economy solve real physical problems? Can it feed itself? Can it produce what you need in a pandemic? Are there goods and services that are universally in demand over the long term, which you produce better than anyone else?
It’s like growth of GDP has become this silly KPI that our governments obsess over whilst ignoring what’s making that happen. You can grow GDP by destroying the environment or running a Ponzi scheme, but what you really care about is the underlying strength of the economy.
The U.K. was heavily exposed by covid, in terms of its manufacturing capability and its managed response. We looked weak and disorganised. Now we need to learn from that and focus on growing a diverse and solid economy that is powerful and flexible enough to respond properly to challenges like the energy price hikes.
But I suspect the next bubble will grow just like crypto and our government will continue to pretend everything is ok.
If you're talking about literally the companies that bought as part of the initial IPO then yes, most are trading below their opening day prices. But all YC companies IPOed during the post-GFC bull market, and are now being valued in a different regime, so that's not unexpected especially with the YC hype.
DBX and ABNB are doing well (they're down relative to the highs of the last year or two but so is everything in tech). GTLB also looks like a pretty strong company given their solid market positioning and quality enterprise SaaS metrics. I'd classify those 3 as doing well overall.
