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Every few years, sometimes in sync with recessions and sometimes far outside of them, Silicon Valley experiences a wave of hubris related to how one does or does not run a business.
It’s very simple: Silicon Valley occasionally experiences a foie gras-esque phenomenon where they choose a particular industry or group of industries to pump full of cash. These unwieldy and inefficient companies all have similar hallmarks — insane valuations, effusive press, and very few people asking “but how does the company make money?” The answer, of course, is that these companies do not make money, they eat it. They eat, and eat, and eat, craving endless venture capital to pump up valuations in the hope of an acquisition, and then they run out of money and start puking all over people’s lives.
This gross example can be seen again and again in companies like Bird, or Jokr (who lost $159 per order), or even Uber, a company that has never been profitable without having to create a matrix of financial analysis to prove it, which is otherwise known as lying. Silicon Valley — the media, the venture capitalists, the influencers — picks its winners based on believing the business can be a success but not necessarily because they believe that they can be sustainable. Japanese venture capitalist SoftBank splurged so much money that they’ve lost $27 billion dollars in their popular and overstuffed Vision Fund.
We have, of course, seen this before. Laundry startups and valet startups and meal delivery startups are all great…
