It's probably not dire.

It doesn't change the fact that the price has dropped meaningfully, it's not just multiples contracting while revenues go up.

I agree. It's not there. In fact, we've seen something like five of these corrections in the last 10 years. https://www.tomtunguz.com/five-corrections-saas/

It's dire for companies and their staff who have been raising big rounds.

Their next round risks being a flat/down round, and especially as many big ones are disconnected from revenue and efficiency. Each round assumes a following bigger round, and as soon as that stops, historically unlikely to recover the FOMO. Investors can go to another co without that proven risk, and the company spirals. Doing layoffs now can work for self-efficiency, or not hiring to plan, but that still means not hitting revenue & growth numbers, so either way, poof goes the valuation.

Ex: It was ugly watching colleagues get major lost $ from Uber over-valuing itself, and at least Uber had significant revenue. Now go to the many sales/marketing/sloppy cloud-driven co's, which is where over half those fund raise $s go and at much lower net revenue: that's a lot of people 12mo +/- 6mo from now.

This is also why I advise folks to price in the next 2 years of growth (~10x) for offers from these kinds of companies as already eaten by VCs, and thus only evaluate for 100-1000x growth. For bigger/later rounds, do another 2-10x. Brutal.