The CEO of a $1 billion 'unicorn' startup admits we're in a bubble

http://www.businessinsider.com/1-billion-unicorn-ceo-yes-its-a-tech-bubble-2015-6

by lladnar • 11 years ago

67 80 11 years ago

jasondc• 11 years ago

Wait until we have the first 1 person startup valued at $1 billion (it is only a matter of time).

I don't think this is from a bubble, but how new technology can let companies grow very quickly (AWS for hosting, social networks for word of mouth, etc.)

brianbreslin• 11 years ago

what is the smallest billion $ startup at time of sale? Instagram?

beat• 11 years ago

WhatsApp, probably.

stevewilhelm• 11 years ago

Instagram 12 employees, WhatsApp had 55, Tumblr 178

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127343/Facebook-buy...

[2] http://pando.com/2014/02/24/whatsapp-bought-for-19-billion-w...

[3] http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-05-22/what-tumblrs...

dopamean2• 11 years ago

I don't know much about it but I'm sure Minecraft was worth a shitload for a while when Notch was the only one developing it.

k-mcgrady• 11 years ago

But unlike most companies in SV they were worth a lot because they were making a lot of money! They were selling a product, not giving it away and praying they got bought or found an innovative new advertising model.

cylinder• 11 years ago

Why do people keep making the point that in this boom, tech startups actually have revenue? It doesn't mean anything if the company grosses $1 million or $0. What matters is the valuations. Even taking into account their revenues (in some rare cases, profits), the companies are wildly valued and investors are making extremely ambitious and optimistic growth assumptions.

taki13• 11 years ago

If interest rates are at 7% (savings account returns you 7% annualy) who will invest in risky start-ups?

If you can just go to a bank branch deposit cash and get back 7% -- are you going to go and invest in Uber instead? Really? Because it has "great valuation" ?

austenallred5• 11 years ago

If interest rates are at 7% (savings account returns you 7% annually) who will invest in risky start-ups?

Well, they're not. Interest rates are so extremely low right now that they don't even keep up with inflation. In several banks and several countries, the interest rate is actually less than zero. Or, in other words, banks charge you to store your money for you.

Given that, is investing in technology really that bad of an idea? You have to put your money somewhere.

VCs are mostly funded by large stashes of money - some of it among the oldest and most secure money in the world - called limited partners (LPs). Think endowment funds, that type of thing. Those funds will diversify their investments across multiple aspects of the economy. For simplicity sake, we'll say 50% real estate, 40% stock/bonds, and 10% into VC funds. VCs take a small chunk, and invest the rest in tech companies.

In that way, some of the most institutionalized money in the world will, yes, be invested in Uber. Really.

mateo411• 11 years ago

If the interest rate is at 7 percent, then inflation will probably be between 5 and 10 percent.

There would be other opportunities in an economy that will yield more than 7 percent, if the bank is offering 7 percent. Additionally, the inflation rate would be higher, so not investing your money, is losing it to inflation.

refurb• 11 years ago

Because inflation will be 5% and your real return will be 2%?

Interest rates will rise in response to inflation.

austenallred5• 11 years ago

Because they're comparing to 1999.

In 1999 you could get a billion dollar valuation with not much more than a domain name and an idea. Most of those never ended up making any money at all.

Now, OK, valuations may be high, but at least there is cold hard cash involved. There are hundreds of success stories involving cold hard cash, where in 1999 everything evaporated because the whole damn thing was based on smoke and mirrors.

In other words, even if a company earning $10m/year in profit isn't worth $500M, at least they're worth something. Last time they weren't worth anything.

ericabiz2• 11 years ago

"In 1999 you could get a billion dollar valuation with not much more than a domain name and an idea. Most of those never ended up making any money at all."

Well, kind of. Having been there, the biggest problem I remember is not that these companies didn't have any revenue, it's that they didn't have any profit. Webvan, Kozmo, Pets.com, etc. had customers. They just lost money on every sale. The problem came when investors stopped funding them to do so, and many of them went out of business literally overnight (like Chuck's comment elsewhere in this thread mentioned.)

I would be more worried if Uber, Airbnb, etc. lost money on every sale. It is relatively easier to turn the marketing knob down to $0 spent, if your customers will still continue using your service at that point. I think the fundamentals are better this time around, though I still strongly feel Valley VC's overweight "getting 100% of the available market" and underweight "making money on each sale."

aetherson• 11 years ago

If you have let's say enough revenue to support yourself, or at least to make your bank account stretch for years and years, but your valuation is $RIDICULOUS, and then your valuation drops to $NOTRIDICULOUS, well... that sucks for your owners (including your employees, presumably), but your company stays alive and your employees stay employed.

If you have no revenue and a high burn rate, then when your valuation drops you get no investors and can't pay your employees and the company folds.

That said, I'm not sure I buy the idea that this boom is marked by a massive increase in companies with (significant) revenues. I mean, yes, Uber has revenues. Instagram didn't, Snapchat doesn't, Whatsapp had laughable revenues, etc. Uber is the most massive outlier of this particular boom. It is definitionally not typical.

clarky076• 11 years ago

instagram and whatsapp are already bought, and facebook does have plenty of revenue. Snapchat has started their business model, and they do at least have some revenue. (Certainly not profit, but revenue).

Any way you look at it, there are still more "real" companies than in 1999. And the rest, well it's not that surprising when startups fail. It's a thing that happens all the time. It's much different than tons and tons of public companies going out of business.

clarky076• 11 years ago

because there is a difference between 100% of value collapsing all at once, and 25-50% going away. Yes, Uber is likely to be overvalued. But it is a real business, with real customers, with real money being exchanged. It won't go to 0 overnight like everything did in 1999. If Uber suddenly goes from 40 bil to 30 bil, who really cares? It just doesn't effect very many people.

Also, these are private companies. If the S&P loses 25-50% overnight it literally effects everyone in the world. If privately held tech companies lose 25-50% it definitely sucks, but it doesn't effect everyone. It just effects rich people in SV, who are all incredibly employable at other companies not in said bubble.

saosebastiao• 11 years ago

I'm not making that point, but I can at least defend it partially. With revenue comes sustainability, even if only partial. That means that if valuations are out of control, it is the investors that lose. Without any revenue, everybody loses, as it was all just a fantasy to begin with.

Of course, if you have revenue but with negative gross margins, as I suspect a lot of current startups(especially delivery oriented) have, then your revenue is an illusion as well.

cheriot• 11 years ago

So everyone agrees that the tech market is overvalued, but there's a pointless semantic argument over calling it a "bubble"? There's always going to be a downturn coming and it will always take some companies down with it. That's why it's called a business cycle.

ChuckMcM3• 11 years ago

In my opinion the bubbleness will be reflected when the music stops. Back when the dot com bubble burst, the thing I found amazing was that people who had been customers just a month before, vanished. Not into chapter 11 (reorginizational) bankruptcy, but chapter 7 (liquidation). I vividly recall showing up for a meeting with a customer's VP of sales at their fancy downtown San Francisco office and getting off at the elevator to an empty floor with a broker taking pictures to put it on the market. From the previous wednesday, "Oh sure, lets talk monday." to Monday's "The previous tenant isn't here anymore." was really startling to me. Almost like the movie trope where the shadowy agency removes its front company over night.

For those companies, it was the fact that they were "pre-revenue" and so the only way to keep the lights on was to raise money. And right up until every investor said "No" and they couldn't make payroll with the money left in the bank, they operated like a company, and then they weren't, For companies these days that do have revenue, they basically have to try to shrink into a profitable place, which is keep as much of the revenue as possible with the fewest possible people / computers / real estate etc. Then they have a shot of surviving. But contracts like leases you can't get out of, can bite you and force you to go into Chapter 11 briefly to renegotiate those contracts.

What is unique I think to tech bubbles though is that the developers are often fine when the bubble bursts, they just go to companies that are built on better financials, its the executives that pay the price and have a harder time finding a new job.

ericabiz2• 11 years ago

+1 to all of this. I lived through the dot-com boom and bust in the Valley, much like Chuck did.

I'd like to add: There is a metric ton of opportunity at the bottom for those who hoarded cash at the top. I used credit card advances, equipment financing, and a SBA loan to buy servers at 10 cents on the dollar when Exodus Santa Clara went bust (I also bought fancy equipment from many other companies.) I started my company in 2001, when I was 20 years old, and in 2007, sold my company ("built on eBay", teased the guy who ran the acquiring company) for over $1 million. This was a completely bootstrapped web hosting company.

This time, if indeed we are in a bubble, I would cash hoard like a mofo, and scout for the new "10 cents on the dollar" opportunities that may well pop up in the next few years. You can build a cash flow-based business relatively cheaply at the bottom. You just have to endure everyone telling you you're crazy (I can't count how many times I heard "What do you think you know better than Exodus/AboveNet/all the big hosting companies who declared bankruptcy?" Well, I know I don't have to sell servers for too much money to clients in order to make a buck, when I'm buying them at 10 cents on the dollar...)

ChuckMcM3• 11 years ago

Agreed, but interestingly this time around folks are all using cloud services it seems so no server hardware to snap up, although I did get a dozen Herman-Miller office chairs for $100 (total not each) at a place that liquidated dead dot com assets last time, and cool office stuff is still in vogue.

mathattack• 11 years ago

This is a rare form of corporate justice, since it's the execs responsible for building a business around a lack of business. :-)

mcguire2• 11 years ago

Don't put too much faith into it. When the bubbles burst, there are always more developers than chairs at other companies.

utuxia• 11 years ago

When the bubble burst there were no jobs. it took me 2 years to get back to my dotcom salary...and 15 years to get back to an offer I turned down.

dataker• 11 years ago

misterbwong• 11 years ago

The one thing that's telling me it isn't a bubble is the sheer number of people calling it a bubble.

It seems the majority of people, inside and out of tech, see it as a bubble. This is what makes me think that it won't "pop" but instead deflate slowly and painfully.

sputknick• 11 years ago

I agree with you. Or you will know it's a bubble when people start to say "this isn't a bubble, it's different this time." It's never different this time.

RaSoJo• 11 years ago

Unfortunately I am hearing a lot of people say the same - the fact that people ARE talking about a bubble and hence it is NOT a bubble. This justification is calming to hear - but could this be the cause of complacency this time around?

zzalpha4• 11 years ago

Funny, people said the same thing leading into 2000/2001... past is indeed prologue when it comes to irrational exuberance.

Which is one of the main points of the article... many in the tech industry (and many here on HN) are too young to remember what a tech bubble looks like, or how painful it is when it pops...

clarky076• 11 years ago

My question isn't is it a bubble or not, the question is what would the effects be this time around?

Most people seem to agree the bubble (if it exists) is in privately held venture backed startup companies. Does the popping of that bubble have significant ramifications across the economy as a whole?

1. Last time they were all public companies, including the big ones like intel,msft, being wildly overvalued. Everyone lost money, not just VC's

2. It will certainly be harder to do a startup, but I suspect all these engineers won't be unemployed. They will go and work for AppGoogBook. AppGoogBook will welcome them with open arms.

To recap, at least I think/hope, VC's and founders are the only one's losing money compared to everyone who might be invested in S&P 500 (read everyone) and there shouldn't be any kind of major unemployment causing extra problems

Is this a reasonable view?

ebbv2• 11 years ago

Unfortunately when the bubble pops while the VCs who hold equity in the overvalued companies will be hit the hardest, the entire economy will suffer. The public stock markets will crash, the housing market will crash, etc.

The irresponsible valuations and investing will hurt everyone.

clarky076• 11 years ago

why would the public markets crash, and why would the housing market outside of SF crash?

I feel like I made reasonable assumptions as to why those things wouldn't happen. If you think that's not the case, at least provide an argument as to why they would, as opposed to stating it as fact.

rayiner• 11 years ago

I don't think it's a reasonable view. Leaving aside the question of whether we're in a bubble or not, if a bubble existed and burst it would have a major impact at least on the bay area economy as a whole.

1) What makes you think there is room at AppGoogBook for those unemployed startup engineers? If the bubble bursts, it'll be because of a reality-check in the growth potential for consumer technology and advertising. AppGoogBook are chasing a lot of those same areas.

2) A lot of service industries in the bay area are being propped up by the software industry. All those new restaurants popping up in SF--how much of their revenues comes from VCs and software engineers whose salaries are paid by VCs?

3) Real estate values and rents in the bay area will plummet of there is a readjustment in the technology sector.

clarky076• 11 years ago

1. "bay area" is not in fact "everyone in america/world" hence, much less bad.

2. I do not think that Apple, Google, and Facebook are significantly competing against many of these startups. Facebook maybe to an extent, by not Apple and Google. None of them are major phone manufacturers or search engines. The only reason a bubble bursting is a problem is for companies without revenue relying solely on VC money to run. Apple is not in fact relying on VC money to run. Apple alone can afford to employ every startup worked in SF (not that they would, but they could)

3) Real estate values and rents in the bay area will plummet of there is a readjustment in the technology sector.

I can't imagine that as being anything but good news long term. certainly sad for those owners now though, i agree. Yet, still not everyone in america.

AlexWest• 11 years ago

Rent never dropped in the Bay in 2008, it just stabilized for a few years. Anyone know how rents reacted in 2000?

ticksoft• 11 years ago

The ad industry gets hit hard during bubble bursts and recessions. Two of the biggest ad sales companies are now Facebook and Google, so they wouldn't be immune.

kittenfluff2• 11 years ago

I had drinks with one of the $1 billion "unicorn" CEOs last night, in a trendy Noho bar in London.

Where the hell is "Noho"? Is this some ridiculous attempt to Americanize London by trying to rename parts of it after bits of New York?

If the author means the area north of Soho, I am happy to point him in the direction of any map of London, where he will see that area labeled "Fitzrovia".

Also, who points out that they were in a 'trendy' bar without covering the word 'trendy' in a fetid, glistening layer of sarcasm? Business Insider journalists, I guess?

dragonwriter2• 11 years ago

Is this some ridiculous attempt to Americanize London by trying to rename parts of it after bits of New York and San Francisco?

AFAICT, SF doesn't have any role at all in the source of names, but otherwise, yes [0]. Of course, lots of the place name in the continental US (and a number of other places) are a result of the same kind of thing in reverse centering around renaming every piece of the continent after parts of Britain, and particularly England, so turn about is fair play.

[0] http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-11305340

kittenfluff2• 11 years ago

Well, I'm glad that Londoners have collectively decided to tell the rebranders where to stick it. I've lived in London for ten years and have never heard someone refer to "Midtown" or "Noho". Urgh.

austenallred5• 11 years ago

So many of these articles (and CEOs) fail to take portfolio theory into account.

Your chances of success are still very small. Almost infinitesimally so, and your valuation doesn't change that.A lot of companies will fail. VCs hope that the ones that are successful are successful in a big enough way to make up for all of the losses.

But the fact that a bunch of "billion dollar" companies are going to go belly up doesn't mean that everyone's acting irrationally. They're just going to subsidize the failure of the many with the success of the few.

A bubble bursting happens if on average the investors lose so badly that their LPs start to put money into something other than startups. Not if some "unicorns" fail.

And by the way, there are a lot more variables than even the success of the startups. Interest rates, success of other types of investments, etc. probably play more of a role in startup valuations than the success of most startups. Right now interest rates are essentially zero, and as a result people are throwing money at almost anything that has a vague promise of a return.

That being said, the entire VC slice of the economy is laughably small compared to other aspects. It's basically rounding error.

swang• 11 years ago

2010: Sorry, But This "Tech Bubble 2.0" Talk Is Ridiculous http://www.businessinsider.com/one-big-reason-were-not-in-te...

2011: 11 Crazy Signs This Really Is A Tech "Bubble" http://www.businessinsider.com/signs-of-tech-bubble-2011-8

2012: A Non-Tech Person's Guide To The Tech Bubble—And Why There ISN'T A Tech Bubble http://www.businessinsider.com/why-there-is-no-tech-bubble-2...

2013: Here's The Evidence That The Tech Sector Is In A Massive Bubble http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-that-tech-sector-is-...

2014: Here's The Evidence That The Tech Bubble Is About To Burst http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-that-tech-bubble-is-...

Have we reached peak, "Tech Bubble" talk yet?

PS. those last 2 articles were written by the same person basically regurgitating the same talking points, but just 1 year later.

akshatpradhan2• 11 years ago

All the URLs come from Business Insider. That's kind of like John Stewart's point how the News Media says year after year that this is the worst Allergy Season ever. Its the worst allergy season every year no matter what because pollen count increases every year no matter what.

TheBeardKing• 11 years ago

Why do pollen counts increase every year? Global temperatures don't rise every year.

albertoleal• 11 years ago

... because pollen count increases every year no matter what.

Is this actually true?

sjm-lbm• 11 years ago

Seems pretty standard. Economists are usually very good at predicting 11 out of 4 recessions/bubbles ending/whatever.

austenallred5• 11 years ago

2009: OK you're right, this is a bubble http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/pmarcaarchive/ok-youre-right...

themeek• 11 years ago

We are definitely in a bubble.

The question is whether, when and how bad it will burst.

Predicting market events like bursts is extremely hard, even for experts - so hard you can make a lot of money from it - remember that economists too said that the housing market was a bubble and wrote posts to mock how, for four years people kept repeating the claims.

If billion dollar valuations for buttons that text 'Yo' isn't a speculation bubble on the one area of US industrial growth, an area that gets a lot of cash influx to keep it going (much of it taxpayer), I don't know what we could call a bubble.

Not all bubbles burst. But how much confidence do you have that the market will remain the way it is today after another series of Snowden revelations, a housing crises (or water crisis) in the Valley, the release of financial information that makes people lose faith, a shocking event like Alibaba beating out Amazon or something, etc?

If you think something like that could seriously damage the industry then you have to admit that the demand for the good and services is highly elastic - or at least fragile.

Fragility of a market + overvaluation and overspeculation implies a bubble.

onewaystreet• 11 years ago

Can you provide an example of a startup that you think is overvalued?

mseebach• 11 years ago

Sure, he says, Uber is a great business and a great company. But $41 billion? Now? Maybe in a few years time.

If that's the best evidence you can come up with, it's not a bubble, it's an overvalued market at best. Uber's valuation collapsing even to, say, 15B, is not a bubble popping in any meaningful sense, and nobody can deny that there's a business there.

In 2000, that we according to this mysterious CEO can't remember, companies with barely any customers, next to no revenue, massive deficits and not even a coherent business plan achieved billion-dollar valuations.

mcguire2• 11 years ago

I was actually kind of surprised by that Uber comment. Sure, it's a completely worthless number, but then the market cap of Ford isn't much more real and it's $61B. So someone thinks Uber is worth a significant chunk of the total value of the industry on which it is built.

[Side note: F is paying ~4% dividends. Hm.]

Anyway, did you see the other evidence presented? Cherry picking:

* Interest rates

* Private valuations not matching public ones

* Tech startups offering stock at a discount (If that's more than a one-off idiocy, well, ew.)

mason552• 11 years ago

But $41 billion? Now? Maybe in a few years time.

Here's the other thing. If you're investing in a startup you're not putting your money in based on some current metric like 3x booked ARR and saying you expect it to throw off enough to cover your investment. The whole idea is that you think it can grow into the valuation you're putting your money in at, that's where the risk is.

If the market believes that Uber is going to grow into a $41B company then that's what it's going to get priced at right now, even if they're not currently "worth" that much based on some present value formula.

It's the same way that product announcements don't generally move stock values - those products were already priced in.

jurymatic2• 11 years ago

Who cares if we're in a bubble or not? A sound business strategy is sound regardless.

phdp• 11 years ago

Everything has risk. During bursting of bubbles, there is a "flight to quality." If you run out of cash to fund your business and you cannot secure financing because the rate of return vs the risk is not attractive to investors, you will go out of business. Those businesses who can survive without outside investments will fare better, but even consumers can be affected by a bursting bubble via layoffs, media talking heads, etc. They may be less willing to spend on unnecessary expenses. This means less revenue and likely profit for the businesses.

jurymatic2• 11 years ago

I agree, but I think the problem you're highlighting is intrinsic to business models that emphasize growth over money making more than it's intrinsic to bubbles.

solve• 11 years ago

You cannot "admit" a prediction of the future as if the prediction of the future were a fact. It can only be predicted.

3pt14159• 11 years ago

The only point that I agree with is this one:

"Margin compression": A lot of tech businesses sell things, and because the market is good there isn't much price competition. My unicorn sees a lot of companies that appear to be dependent on customers paying what they're told to pay. These companies have yet to experience, or survive, a price war with their rivals.

All the other ones are BS.

Entire generation of entrepreneurs under age 30 have no memory of 2000 or 2008.

Lol wut? I'm 29. I remember both in vivid detail. I worked in tech in 1999. Sure I was young, but I had been seriously programming for already 4 years. Let alone 2008, that was the year I graduated university. I remember barely landing a job just as things went sideways.

Gen Y knows things can go wrong. Maybe some current 17 or 18 year olds don't.

Interest rates: Central banks currently have interest rates [...]

Find me a bank that will lend me money so that I can invest in startups. It's impossible. Interest rates going up will depress assets prices that are frequently purchased with debt: Housing and Education.

Valuations. [Specifically Uber]

If Uber wins it wins logistics as a whole. This is like talking about Amazon. Back then Amazon realized that books were the only thing that made sense to sell online because of the markups and the fact that customers don't need to touch a book to want to buy it. Then once customers got used to buying stuff online and Amazon worked out their distribution model they expanded to more and more things. Read "ecommerce is a bear".

For other companies, sure there are some winners and some losers. But Facebook, for example, has data on every person on earth that has real spending power. Super, super valuable.

In the 90s only us nerds were online. Today tweens sext. Completely different markets.

Private valuations not matching public ones

1. Sarbanes Oxley. 2. Investors dump stocks that have no real growth left in them onto the public. The only exception was Tesla, and that was out of desperation, and look how well they are doing.

Tech startups offering stock at a discount

This doesn't usually materially effect the valuations of a stock. 20% discount, 50% tops.

Burn rates

If you aren't burning money then it is a huge red flag to investors. There is a very real risk that your money machine doesn't scale or that you can't recruit talent in the same numbers as before.

Too many business models are dependent on "one thing not happening"

This would be a factor if there actually were a bubble about to pop. There isn't, so this will naturally work its way out. Also, it isn't like 1999 where all money flowed through Yahoo or Microsoft. The world has more real world businesses like arms contractors, that don't overlap business cycles.

I've been saying that there isn't a bubble for over 7 years. There still isn't a bubble. There will be one that starts to form soon when crowd investing starts to get underway world wide, but until retail investors invest in startups in a large and meaningful way, there isn't a bubble.

bla2• 11 years ago

tech stocks are at an all-time high

The stock market has a positive return on average. Which means that on average stocks (not just tech stocks) are at an all-time high all the time, no?

paulhodge• 11 years ago

In order for it to be a "bubble", the collapse needs to be severe enough that it has a downward momentum. Enough so that even companies with good business models are affected & become undervalued.

I don't see that happening. There are lots of companies with strong business models (Google/Apple/Amazon/Etc) which will be fine if all the revenueless startups suddenly go away. They'll probably be happy they get to hire up all the newly unemployed talent.

Remember.. just because a downward correction is coming, doesn't mean it's a bubble.

pyre• 11 years ago

People are more likely to refer to it as a bubble because of the 2000 "Dot Com Bubble." While 2008 was a "housing bubble" most people just refer to it as the 2008 recession. People are just most apt to draw comparisons between the tech industry now and the tech industry in 1998-2000, so referring to it as a bubble happens.

The CEO of a $1 billion 'unicorn' startup admits we're in a bubble

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