burning $25m before breakfast
harder than it looks!
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
Friends, Have you ever been casually raising $1 billion on a $100 billion valuation (a classic “1 on 100” deal) for your capped profit start-up and thought, lol, yolo, why not make it $6.5 billion on $150 billion instead?
Next week I fully expect OpenAI to be raising $42.25 billion on a valuation of $225 billion. Nothing could be more relatable!
Just for fun, here are some publicly traded companies that are currently worth roughly $150 billion (give or take $15b) and, I assume but haven’t checked, are not on track to burn $5 billion this year:
📈Goldman Sachs, 📈Morgan Stanley, 🔨Lowes, 🛜Comcast, 📊Progressive, 📱AT&T, 🛡️Raytheon Technologies, ✨Walt Disney.
Meanwhile the CEO of a cybersecurity start-up with much better unit economics that just sold to Mastercard for $2.65 billion had a sick burn for the unprofitables among us: “We have been incredibly capital efficient and profitable for years. Compare that to the West Coast where people burn $25 million before they go to breakfast.”
Damn. Does he think burning $25m before breakfast is easy? OpenAI is trying their hardest to light money on fire, and, assuming they eat at 8 and my math is correct (don’t check), even they are only burning around $4.6 million before breakfast.
Important Business Matters
Startup everyone’s into: Folk search engines.
Startup everyone’s over: World Liberty Financial.
Reason to go on living: If you loved YC demo days, you’re about to get 2x more of them!
Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: Biohacking brides.
Latest crush: Will you marry me on the blockchain?
Latest heartbreak: RIP to the Code conf.
Latest thing the tech bloggers are into: All. The. Gear. (When I started tech blogging my “gear” was a Blackberry, notebook, recorder and actual desktop computer…)
Latest thing the kids are into: “beany leeky greens with greeky rampy beans.”
Latest thing the olds are into: 👀 Last week we established that this newsletter is apparently, for reasons of terrible taste, an 👏emoji 👏 focused 👏 publication👏 in both content and in form. So I am honored to break the news to you that the upcoming batch of emojis will include one that is sure to immediately join my “frequently used” ranks. Introducing Face With Bags Under Eyes:
a dall-e summary of this newsletter:
“humorously capturing the mix of corporate giants, emojis, and the chaos of modern tech.”
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
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