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> How is venture capital expected to perform well in these conditions?

I'm not sure that this author or Carta as a whole is trying to suggest private markets should be performing better right now. We're all painfully aware of why this is happening. These reports are usually just presenting the raw data.

> I'm less interested in "how bad is the state of venture capitalism" right now and more interested in "when is it roughly expected to get better/be less bad again"?

An analyst's report for any asset class (real estate, public equities, etc) has to start with the cut and dry numbers. But they do sprinkle in a bit of guidance using the data:

"There are signs of a venture spring. Valuations from seed to Series C ticked up from recent lows. Median round sizes mostly stabilized. But these green shoots were overwhelmed by the decline in total rounds across all stages."

I don't think it's fair to complain that you're not interested in reading about the state of venture capitalism on an article titled "The State of Private Markets". The article delivered exactly what it promised in the title.

> I don't think it's fair to complain that you're not interested in reading about the state of venture capitalism

Apologies, I should've tried to sound less whiny. I guess what I was trying to say is "things are bad, what did you expect?"

> 1. Pandemic economic relief to offset otherwise lost wages due to restrictions is roughly equivalent to "injected money/liquidity from the sky"

> 2. Subsequent inflation

I dislike this representation a LOT because I have the feeling more money was distributed to business owners under the incredibly corrupt PPP loans, and then... it turns out corporate profiteering is the real driver of inflation.

People keep peddling this "giving people money in a pandemic caused all our problems" line, but it's just not true, it's not grounded in reality, and if it was a contributing factor, let's look at the other things that costed more...

Citizen's tax dollars being paid back to them when you can't leave your home is not a driver of inflation

Citizen's tax dollars being gifted to business owners who also proceeded to jack up their profit margins due to shocking price elasticity due to a complete lack of antitrust enforcement for 40 years is THE driver of inflation

It's amazing how on an article about VC you've both managed to argue that no one should write articles about VC and then blamed citizens for corporate-driven inflation.

The mainstream economics consensus is that inflation was kicked off due to excess savings and limited supply of goods (first) then services (second).

The idea that business profits are driving inflation is a partisan talking point, not at all consensus.

> The mainstream economics consensus

Should be linkable from multiple sources. Care to provide some, then?

> was kicked off due to excess savings

That's a partisan talking point if I've ever heard one, and has largely died out in popularity in my view, since we've seen the endless lists of all-time-high corporate profits and margins

> The idea that business profits are driving inflation

Couldn't be more obvious. If everything costs more, and corporations are making record profit and revenue across the board, there's probably no limitation of goods or services.

For instance, [0] argues my claim directly, [1] shows some details of that relationship, and there's an internet full of it.

Everything supporting this "excess savings" bit is either from Republicans or 2021, care to link me something a bit more definitive?

[0]: https://www.kansascityfed.org/research/economic-review/how-m....

https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/inflation-market-pow...

Economists reject the assertion that corporate greed is the cause of inflation because corporations have always been greedy and there was no inflation in the 2 decades before covid.

Notably from January 11, 2022

Also, the argument makes no sense

> corporations have always been greedy and there was no inflation in the 2 decades before covid

Corporations have clearly achieved deregulation at a greater scale than ever before, both thru devices like regulatory capture to weaken regulatory instruments, and by achieving wealth and therefore power at scales comparable to first world nations.

The past did indeed happen in the past, but our past - unlike the authors of that article - includes knowledge of a full year of ludicrous financials and outsized margins being published by corp after corp.

What does any writing not from 2021 say? I already addressed that point quite nicely for the audience, I thought.

> ludicrous financials and outsized margins being published by corp after corp

If you translate those financials into real terms, they're less ludicrous. Sometimes negative. Margin expansion absolutely contributed to inflation [1]. (On par with labor.) But this happened through wage suppression.

> Corporations have clearly achieved deregulation at a greater scale than ever before, both thru devices like regulatory capture to weaken regulatory instruments

What changed between 2021 and 2023 that gave them this power?

There are solid cases made for care investments, to boost labour participation, and a variable corporate tax rate that kicks in when inflation is high. But they have to be based on sane, empirical arguments.

[1] https://www.epi.org/blog/corporate-profits-have-contributed-...

> What changed between 2021 and 2023 that gave them this power?

I think it's fairly evident that the rule of law and corporate oversight in the US was greatly weakened from 2016-2020, and at the start of 2021 an event some argue was essentially a failed coup occurred, yet the only punishments were issued to commoners and none of the instigators or would-be beneficiaries. Why would corporations not be emboldened at such a sight?

I agree otherwise with what you've said, and indeed I am not nearly qualified enough to propose the vehicles to change economic outcomes - but it's clear that the narratives denying corporate profiteering's role in inflation are outdated.

Can you link to a few examples of substantive 'weakening' of the 'rule of law and corporate oversight in the US'?

Net neutrality rules come to mind

Which parts specifically?

It is interesting to me to ponder why you carried on an alternate thread instead of the original one which you wished to challenge.

Almost anyone on HN can see through this type of low effort passive-aggressive commenting. So this makes it even less likely me, or anyone else, well provide a substantive response.

The only low effort passive aggressive posting in this thread is from you - posting gotcha questions that aren’t gotchas and then tucking tail when sources come thru.

You already were clearly at 0% probability of a substantive reply. Nice attempt at deflection tho - I see you’re learning from the republicans whose boots you love to lick

> The only low effort passive aggressive posting in this thread is from you - posting gotcha questions that aren’t gotchas and then tucking tail when sources come thru. You already were clearly at 0% probability of a substantive reply. Nice attempt at deflection tho - I see you’re learning from the republicans whose boots you love to lick

This does not increase your credibility, especially when hiding behind a pseudonym account made in 2020 replying to someone using their real name since 2014 on HN.

So it seems like a losing proposition to continue digging a hole.

But it's no skin off my back.

Let's see if I have this straight.

I post: corporate power is growing.

You post: prove it.

I prove it.

You stop responding about this idea.

Then, given an opening when I called you out on it, you have tried to imply:

* I am at fault for your lack of "substantive reply"

* I am at fault for using a pseudonym

* Because you use your "real name", you have street cred

I would like you to explain to me why you even bothered asking me to prove the regulatory environment was weakened in the states by Trump, that is obvious. It really makes no sense why you've come in and introduced such a bad faith chain of arguments on a topic you have made absolutely 0 points about.

You mean the thing that people claimed if it were repealed, the internet as we know it would end? Then the thing did get repealed, and nothing really changed?

Sure.

[0]: Trump tax cut 35% -> 21%, purely a gift to corporations. They now have more wealth and power. Couple this with the fact Trump continued to reduce IRS funding - and Republicans push back against Biden growing it - corporations gain more power to evade tax, and gain more wealth and power. I could find you a long list of things to this vein, but I would first suggest your head is in the sand if this is new to you.

[1]: His daughter and Kushner made hundreds of millions during their time in the Trump administration. Corruption at the top level of the administraton emboldens and enables corruption at other levels of the administration, which leads to corporations having more pressure points to continue their assault on regulatory bodies and powers.

[2]: He elected a Supreme Court that is blatantly partisan, undoes prior art despite a complete vacuum of new legislation on those matters, and is undermining the power of all kinds of regulatory agencies. For instance, take the EPA no longer being able to issue environmental regulations.

[X]: Some reading you might do well by.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/30/trump-tax-cu...

[1]: https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...

[2]: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1103595898/supreme-court-epa-...

[X]: https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/

My uncle's business got a $600K+ PPP loan. They had at least 10 million in cash and did not need the money. Why did they get it? Because they could. To be fair, they did pass it all out as employee bonuses.

>Citizen's tax dollars being paid back to them when you can't leave your home is not a driver of inflation

The pandemic relief wasn't funded by "Citizen's tax dollars". It was funded by borrowing. Lending/printing this much money in such short amount of time is going to cause inflation because demand (caused by dollars cojured out of nowhere) is chasing limited supply.

So then, we agree that because PPP loans were a larger amount of money produced in the exact same fashion, it follows that PPP loans should be assigned a larger share of the blame than stimulus cheques to citizens, and accordingly any mentioning of one without the other is a disingenuous attempt at implying governments should not spend money on their citizens livelihood.

Understood.

The biggest joke is ppp loans had tons of fraud or non necessities. This was tax free gains pushed into housing and assets that the wealthy own. Those wealthy then speculated more leading to a lot of the inflation

>I'm less interested in "how bad is the state of venture capitalism" right now and more interested in "when is it roughly expected to get better/be less bad again"?

This rounds up to "how long do recessions usually last" and the answer is an unsatisfying "it depends" https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/25364.jpeg

I'd suggest that ~5% is monetarily neutral and roughly the correct rate for pricing time/risk, it only seems high compared to the zero rates we've had recently. It may have to go (much?) higher for a (long?) period to fix the current inflation situation.