It’s Monday. The stock market is in free-fall as businesses finally move out of denial and into panic over tariffs against our neighbors and threat of recession.
Congress is even more ineffectual and foolish than usual. It no longer has the cover of being divided by separate parties, as one single party owns the executive and legislative branch. Now they are exposed and frightened.
And our Supreme Court, the last recourse of the downtrodden, is a farce, beholden to extreme interests and no longer concerned with trivialities like “rule of law” and “precedent”.
All in all, just another day in the fractured US of A.
So what are the elder American people who voted for all this concerned about? Not their children losing their govenment jobs. Not the price of eggs, housing, medicine, and other needs for life. They claim to worry about their social security checks and medicare and the VA (for the many veterans), but can’t wrap their heads around anything actually happening to them.
The young tiktok “influencers” – the ones who didn’t lose their jobs yet – are ghost dancing their way along Spring Break (Who the hell ever had time for this during college? Nobody I knew ever did…) and SXSW. Aww, they’re so cute. Look at their little tiktoks. They think they’re “creative” and “tech-savvy”. Bless their little hearts.
All these folks seriously think they’re above all this. So they keep with the cheering. That’s what’s great about addiction cults. They’ll starve to death whilst destruction rains down on them.
And so it goes.
In Silicon Valley, as we head into the long-predicted recession, what are the prospects for startups and technology? As with anything else, it’s complicated, but there are opportunities if one is very very careful.
The first rule of these times is: Only work with people who you know will keep their deals. Money isn’t easy, so the con artists get desperate. They offer amazing deals. Don’t bother.
The second but just as important rule: Keep your cards close. It’s impressive the number of lying “me-too” assholes that crowd a deal when you’re getting traction.
Recessions can actually work out for startups – hard technology startups, that is. William and I got several technology startups funded during recessions. This is because flim-flam deals don’t have the same upside as during the times when money is cheap.
Technology is inherently a counter-strategy to risk-adverse investments. Recessions bring very low yields when low-risk. So look for reputable investors, appropriate referrals, and work your term sheet pragmatically.
As to all those “influencers” at SXSW who think tiktok is technology? Don’t hire them. Hire those young scientists and engineers and project managers laid off from the government because they were on “probation” for the sin of, get this, getting promoted for doing a good job. You won’t regret it.