As stocks continue to tumble, what’s ahead for startups?


The world is a mess today. Everything that trades is down, and sentiment is in the toilet. Even Robinhood is undertaking its ritual downtime, ensuring that its userbase holds through the selloff. The unicorn’s inability to stay online could be viewed as feature instead of a bug. How? Because it prevents panic selling, we suppose.

On a more serious note, what is going to happen to startups during all of this? In honor of thinking out loud, I have a few guesses that I wanted to write down. As always, though, I want to hear from you. Email in if you have a prediction that’s worth sharing.1 I might post a few later in the week.

For everyone in a hurry, here’s my set of guesses (details below): SaaS valuations retreat, but retain their premium; D2C’s problems multiply, but select players survive; customer acquisition costs (CAC) issues lessen as spend slows; venture totals slip materially in Q1 (never mind what you read on VC Twitter); Q1 IPOs are garbage and Q2 doesn’t get much better unless stocks return to highs.

Let’s dig into each in detail.