The event was intended as a way to shock the start-ups into reining in costs to survive the downturn. Sequoia’s presentation quickly became the talk of Silicon Valley, which did not fall into as deep an economic funk as other parts of the United States. In 2016, Jim Breyer, a venture capitalist who was an early Facebook investor, also predicted “blood in the water” for the unicorns. But the money continued to flood into tech start-ups from overseas investors, private equity firms, corporations and SoftBank’s behemoth Vision Fund. “You have to adjust to reality and play the game on the field,” he said in an interview last year.

Source: New York Times October 08, 2019 16:18 UTC