The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley
and and and and and
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•by your best friend erin griffith•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
Friends! The launch of Substack “Notes” and the generally declining experience of Twitter has inspired a little reflection here at EGTttHoB™ HQ. What might happen, I thought, if I fire off the first new edition of this newsletter in two years? Mass unsubscribes? Perhaps! Personal delight? Definitely. I’ve missed you guys. And the Business Heroes™ have been so busy.
As have their criminal defense lawyers! Is it just me or does it feel like start-up fraud is all around us? Way back 1.5 years ago, when the Elizabeth Holmes trial was underway, the meme was that almost no start-up CEOs ever got prosecuted, much less punished, really, for bad behavior. What halcyon ZIRP-ity-doo-dah days.
Now we have FTX and Outcome Health and Frank and Ozy Media and Slync and uBiome and HeadSpin and and and and and. What a time! It got me wondering about the strange dichotomy this creates for the venture capitalists who back these companies: They are the most sophisticated, visionary thought leading investors in the world. And they are also victims of fraud. My story:
📈The End of Faking It in Silicon Valley📉
What else? 🏦 The aftermath of SVB. ⛓️ Rebranding Crypto (“Web3” and “crypto” bad, “blockchain” and “decentralization” good). 🤖 The A.I. funding frenzy.
Important Business Matters
Startup everyone’s into: A daycare center for lonely millennials.
Startup everyone’s over: Bankrupt SPACs.
Reason to go on living: Fyre Festival is back.
Reason to take up residence under your weighted blanket: Business Hero™ VCs reversing moral stances on Saudi $$.
Latest crush: Wooly mammoth meatballs.
Latest heartbreak: The sails on Business Hero™ Jeff Bezos’s superyacht are so large it can’t accommodate a helipad. He will have to land on a support boat. 😢
Latest thing the kids are into: Ludicrously capacious bags.
Latest thing the olds are into: thx.
current status expressed by generative AI*:
“a wooly mammoth carrying a ludicrously capacious bag on a superyacht”
*Sadly, Dall-E has rendered my beloved weird stock art obsolete… or at least made it less interesting. That joke sure had a good run!
*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•the end•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•*´¨`*•.¸¸.•
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