I really hope they won’t get bailed out. I think it would be healthier for tech if there was less investor money floating around so people can focus in tech and not on hyper growth. Maybe there will be a trend towards more bootstrapped companies that run real businesses as in making profits.
I really hope so too. I've been running a decently-profitable bootstrapped company for a few years now and it's been weird having potential investors/acquirers looking more at things like activity/growth metrics than dollar amounts and profitability. (Obviously, both are very important and I understand why an investor would look at what a cash infusion could do; but I generally lean toward dollar amounts, runway, margins, and traction being more important when valuing a company than how quickly I could theoretically scale up and pivot/expand into new markets).
I think there's a big disconnect in the world of "startups" (hyper growth) and "small businesses" (profitability and scaling), and bridging the gap between the two might have a net-positive impact on the market at large.
That makes two. German start-ups managed to convince the government to set-up a 2 Bn € fund to bail out start-ups (that are defined how again?). The reasoning is that these companies are not eligible for other programs by virtue of not being financially stable enough to get bank loans. It's basically a VC / investor bail out. It would be rediculous if it wasn't so sad.
I wish I could upvote this 10 times. The Silicon Valley meme of some companies is too real. I only work for companies with a practical business model that I think has an actual chance of making money.
Meanwhile, in the real world of VC’s, they’re still looking for the “Uber of x” to pull in a 100x return before they can offload the smoking carcass to the public markets.
