A substantial chunk of the tech industry are speculative zombie companies that are built on the edifice of zero interest.
The bubble can clearly be seen by the disassociation of valuations from the underlying value, which for many new companies is nothing.
Most of these unicorns simply can't turn a profit with their current cost structures. And even if they do, the profits will be so small that the valuations will simply not be justifiable.
The hope is that everyone is going to march in line and not go out asking for raises due to inflation; so that we end up with "hyper-inflation" before the supply chain system stabilizes, maybe the Russo-Ukraine conflict sees some light, and the U.S. Treasury can decide they can't sustain this any longer.
Thus, we are praying for all these pieces to kinda fall into place, so we don't end up with hyper-inflation, recession and interest rates going down all at the same time.
P.S. You can follow the target to actual rates here https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/desk-operations/reverse-r...
Click All to see the difference in scale we are talking about to the past. 2 Trillions are parked to the Fed by banks, accumulating the new high interest, waiting for a signal to be re-enter.
If you look at discounted future cashflow, a startup as an investment opportunity is much more influenced by the interest rate than an established company because a larger % of the value is coming from money farther in the future.
Basically 20% of net present value of Microsoft comes from the money it'll make next year and 5% from the money it'll generate 5 yrs from now.
But a startup is the opposite where 0% of the value of the startup comes from the profit it'll make next year, and 20% from the profit it'll make in 5.
And when interest rates change it reduces the present value of the profits in 5 years by far more than it reduces the profits next year. Reducing the value of the startup relative to Microsoft, reducing the startups ability to get funded more than Microsofts.
So for 99% of startups (who don't raise venture capital anyway) there is no difference. But for Microsoft there is a huge difference, which is why the big tech companies are doing layoffs. Whereas we're not seeing many Indiehackers posts about people working out of their parents' basements who are laying themselves off.
The moment the economy tightens up, suddenly the venture funds have less money.
I'm not sure what's causal in it all, but from the outside it certainly looks like that's what happens.
It's not that they have less money, it's just that when 1yr treasuries are paying over 4%, the returns in risk-adjusted investments need to either return a lot more or die.
This is happening to me right now with my parents not being able to help as much with my kids' college tuition.