waking up to the reality that 80% of economic activity is unproductive sounds pretty doom and gloom to me.
you think the other 20% will just absorb that labour?
you think the other 20% will just absorb that labour?
The parent comment is talking about 80% of companies struggling to raise series A, not 80% of the entire economy or even the entire startup ecosystem.
global economy>us economy>tech economy>vc backed co's>series A needed co's>series A not avails to co's etc.
1. Most of the labor is already in funded startups, because funded startups can afford to hire more labor.
2. Of the 80% of startups that can't get Series A, the founders and early employees can remain in the startup ecosystem. Some of them will eventually hit upon something successful as well.
3. If not, large companies and successful startups never have as many engineers as they need anyway because there is a shortage of engineers. It is not clear whether the pool of engineers stuck in unpromising, unfunded startups is larger than this shortage.
I think if there is an 80% death rate, then nobody has to worry about aquihire deals: Companies will simply go back to normal hiring.
Or let's put it this way: 80% of startups will not reach $100M in revenue. Does that sound so bad?