Overall venture funding goes down - industry pundits panic. Let them

slightly cocky, comming from a startup that depends on other startups being able to hire.

For every 6 crappy ideas not being funded, might a good one that unfortunately might not be funded as well.

And it is crazy thinking that overrall economy and investors' sentiments don't matter. What if in 3-4 years the economy is still not fully recovered, and your company is running out of cash? What if you want to exit? A lot of companies that cashed out around 2002-2003 were undervalued, because such was the sentiment right then. Rottentomatoes sold for something like 10million (don't remember the exact sum), and if it waited few more years it probably will have fetched a lot more.

We don't know how long, and how bad this downturn will be, this is just the beginning.

I don't understand the argument that "less investment means only the better companies will get funded." At best, you would have to say "less investment means only the better companies [according to VC's] will get funded". VC's are probably better at picking companies than disgruntled entrepreneurs admit, but all of them clearly fund more failures that successes.

But I think the most likely result is that "less investment means that only the safer bets will get funded." If there is a general economic downturn and fewer opportunities for a big exit (from either buyout or IPO), than I would think that VC's would get more conservative.

The other key indicator will be the health of the online ad market; if it collapses than you can expect the entire VC/startup ecosystem to collapse. This is why Google's earnings last week were such good news. But even if a downturn in the ad market does happen, maybe that won't be such a bad thing - then everyone would have to listen to DHH!