Happy Sunday everyone.
You would not know it by the stock market averages or commodity prices, but there has been a nasty selloff rotating through most markets and it is catching up with crypto.
Fred sums it up here (his full post):
It also makes me wonder if the “pay any price” mentality in venture may ease up a bit this year. When the IPO markets or the M&A markets can’t/won’t be able to pay more for a business than the private markets are paying, that’s unsustainable. It can last a few quarters, maybe even a year. It can’t last forever. We will see.
I played defense most of last year which made for terrible performance versus the averages, but time will tell if it was the right move in my seed investing where I led the fewest deals since we started investing as Social Leverage in 2009.
As for what is next…nobody knows. When the markets selloff, the crazies come back out looking for clicks. I recommend reading less financial news and making more sales calls.
I will wait for prices to go much lower or to firm and start going back up again in the public markets software sector and keep looking for founders that understand the math of a reasonable seed round in the private markets. The between stuff is really messy right now.
Barry Silbert (a great founder and investor in crypto) is a little more blunt about the prices of seed rounds where I make my living:
Note to self…bug Barry until he comes on my podcast.
Moving on…
On a lighter note, the Smartless podcast had Barry Sonnenfeld (Get Shorty and so many other great comedies) as their guest and it was great. Note to self – get Barry on my podcast as well!
I am keeping it light this week so go do something fun today.
I’m excited for season finale of ‘Mayor of Kingstown’ today.
I’m dreading my long ride today but off I go.
