Exit unicorns, pursued by bears
economist.com
economist.com
The examples of "fake tech", startups assuming easy entry into markets due to mass adoption of internet computing (via smartphones) and then running into fundamental problems with their business models, and the valuations based on creative accounting also sound familiar.
This really is the dot-com bubble 2.0, isn't it.
Indeed, the current dotcom situation is a bubble, and it was long due. Meanwhile, let's hope investors become better at identifying real value, real innovation, real game changers. It's often the boring stuff.
From the website of the woman who coined the term - Michele Wucker [0]:
""" A “gray rhino” is a highly probable, high impact yet neglected threat: kin to both the elephant in the room and the improbable and unforeseeable black swan. Gray rhinos are not random surprises, but occur after a series of warnings and visible evidence. The bursting of the housing bubble in 2008, the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and other natural disasters, the new digital technologies that upended the media world, the fall of the Soviet Union…all were evident well in advance. """
And if a nuclear war broke out, that'd hardly be unexpected or random.
"Black Swan" does not mearly mean "unique and significant". The unpredictability of a black swan event is the main cause of concern, as it doesn't allow for much preparation.
COVID-19 is unequivocally a Black Swan.
Hopefully, we get a CDC 'mini Army' like Korea/Taiwan have so this doesn't happen again.
So yes, as you say, a black swan event is allowed to be something that is in the realm of possibility. But it has to be improbable. And it has to be something unforeseeable by people knowledgeable in the field. COVID-19 does not pass either of those tests; it definitely is not a black swan event.
A pandemic scenario was modeled/tested just last year [1]. Some participating states appear to have learned from it, other not so much.
'Some guy, somewhere predicted the 2008 crash, therefore, it should have been obvious'
People have been running 'pandemic' simulations forever, this is not a new idea.
There are multitudes of catastrophic scenarios we could face.
Pandemics that break out at this level are probably 'once in several generations' (at least pre-full globalization) which implies effective 'Black Swan'.
The next pandemic may be in 20 or 200 years, nobody knows, hence 'Black Swan'.
It was a study that lasted for months and involved the US Fed Gov plus 12 states. This isn't one talking head spouting their pet theories on their blog, then later turned out to be correct.
The US military runs China-US engagement scenarios all the time, of a variety of flavours i.e. S. China sea flare-up, Tawian invasions etc. You know we are running Europe/WW3/Russian nuclear standoff drills and simulations - all the time, right? Any one of those scenarios is very unlikely to happen, but somewhere in the world, something similar will happen.
The Fed and large banks constantly 'stress testing' and producing models for relatively unpredictable things?
Insurance companies are constantly doing fairly complex modelling built with really good data?
And academia is rife with all of those activities.
After the 2008 crises, there would have been an easy handful of individuals of credibility who were predicting much of what happened. Dot-com crash. 9/11. Saddam's Invasion of Iraq. If there's any likelihood at all of something happening, someone is talking about it in a meaningful way.
No - this is not true at all.
1) All of the major economic calamities were 'predicted by someone' in the field.
2) Black Swans are 'improbable' - which COVID absolutely is.
"According to Taleb, black swans are events that emerge unpredictably, like a tornado, from a fat-tailed statistical distribution."
What we are seeing is point-blank exemplary of 'Black Swan'.
The difficult part isn't getting a 'mini Army' after a crisis, it's keeping it until the next crisis, against all the beancounters that will soon swoop down and try to optimize it away.
But this time, there is a) political impetus and b) economic calculus.
The plebes will 'vote' for this now, it's something ingrained into an entire generation now.
Banks, regulators, government - they all have crystal clear economic justification.
Large financial institutions, definitely insurance, funds etc. will now integrate all of this into their calculus. So even 'big business' will be on board.
Large banks will pressure governments that don't have a Pandemic Response time.
The elite and plebes are now on board with the 'Pandemic Army' so I suggest it will exist in some, more meaningful fashion.
It might not be 'the best' but it will exist.
Though at the moment there must be some neat online only systems being stood up by devs sheltering at home.
Yet here we are. I'm quite sure some who genuinely believe the coming recession is purely due to Covid-19 and not an inevitability that has been years in the making. I don't know what I would say to those people, I think they might be beyond convincing.
Anyway after a couple of painful years I'm sure we'll be able to watch the recovery and the beginnings of the next boom/bust cycle unfold right here on HN.
We may find markets and economies bounce back relatively quickly (within a year) because the perception of danger has passed.
All the normal rules of monetary and fiscal policy have been thrown out, and assets may well be inflated again in short order by the truly astounding levels of money pouring into the system across the globe. The US government is actually employing the helicopter money concept people used to joke about. We live in interesting times.
It's hard to predict the consequences.
Their actual headline/url seems to be "Technology startups are headed for a fall," which is less fun.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter%27s_Tale#The_Bear
Spoilers!
This is just the next wave in the cycle and those of us that have been around a few years know what to expect. Those that haven’t been though this before or are in denial will learn the hard way.
Nobody cares about your pumped up valuation anymore. If anything pumped up valuations only hurt you in times like these. Options become worthless and early investors don’t want to take a hit at the benefit of others that come in on a severe (down 50+%) down round. What people do care about is how much cash you have and what your burn rate is. Cash is king.
Getting new cash will mean making it with old fashioned revenue and profit. If you can’t do that your days are likely numbered.
I think once we get through the pandemic and begin returning to normal life we may, at least short term, see companies drop the whole develop product, get VC buy in and cash to burn, then explode staff count and product depth without the user base or revenue streams to maintain them. Companies will be more conservative short term and consider their liquidity and ability to reshuffle and adapt vs a titan of their segment buying up all the smart engineers. Some may still go for that (true unicorns, perhaps?). Maybe I'm being optimistic.
A better world is possible.
(Incidentally, while I couldn't get the archive.md link that neonate published to work, either, I could read the full article simply by disabling JavaScript and reloading the page. It's remarkable how many paywalled magazines this works with now. It's almost as if rewriting an essentially all-text web site to be a snazzy web app that pushes all the smarts to the client side has some drawbacks! Who could have predicted.)
That's not their threat model. 99.9% of people don't think to disable javascript. However at the same time search engines get the full text making the story more discoverable. I wouldn't be surprised if you'd get the full story if your referer said you came from Google too, that at least used to be a thing.
https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/wegen-corona-virus-e-scooter...