2. Looks like macro is changing and some sobriety is coming back.
Though you can't blame it exclusively on FAANG when rapidly rising living costs since 2008 and the housing crisis in tech hubs tend to force workers to seek the safest, most stable career paths.
(A) - They make it harder for startups to hire the "best" talent because it is locked up behind a vesting schedule at a FAANG.
(B) - It makes it harder to hire other non-FAANG folks because the comp baseline is so high. Why work at a startup for X w/illiquid options when I could work at FAANG and make X*2 + RSUS that are fairly liquid. Even if those compensation expectations are unrealistic outside of FAANG, they are still there.
This also increases the amount of money startups need to raise by default just to get baseline talent -> leading to over-raising and overvaluation -> leading to benchmarks that are unrealistic -> leading to unnecessary flameouts -> leading to aqui-hires by FAANG.
Reckless spend in the private markets makes it this way.
Crypto is the next stage. Excess supply with nowhere to go.
The sad part of it is that there are now a million startups with no real tech or distribution advantage raising easily simply because of how the markets are.
Hoping the macro climate changes and we focus on real innovation (unlike one click checkout and hoodies)