Thursday, August 18, 2011

Sean's speculation: tech bubble starting to leak

A little while back I'd commented about the tech bubble. I speculated that, once the market falls about 15%, we'd start to see a drop in investing, since tech startups are basically highly leveraged investments:
Here's how it will happen: once our stock market dips again, say 15% (and it's bound to happen eventually, even if it goes up before), Google and other established companies will pare back their acquisitions -- even if it's largely an emotional move. It won't be terrible for them, since they have clear business models and low burn rates. VCs will realize -- from market data, industry hearsay, and experience -- that it's not worth investing as freely in high-risk startups. After all, their hundreds of $100B tech startups no longer have buyers. This won't be the end of VC capital, but it will be enough for a number of tech startups to log off. Of course, many VCs will be hurt by this, which will have second-order market effects as some go bankrupt, and the stock market will drop further, as value is lost overnight. And that's how the bubble will burst.
So my hunch is that this will start to happen pretty soon. First person to bet me $1 can take the other side of the bet (specifically I'm betting that, within 3 months, there will be news article(s) in widely established national or international newspapers that mention (a) the precarious drop in tech startup funding and (b) fresh rounds of layoffs at these startups). This bet is conditioned on the market staying at 15% below its crest for that period.

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