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Banking Madness: A before and after analysis of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, plus what really…

by MPD
This post is by MPD from @MPD - Medium

Banking Madness: A before and after analysis of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, plus what really happened with Silvergate

In the past week three prominent banks closed their doors. On this week’s episode we break down what’s happening.

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*DISCLAIMER*

Interplay Family Office LLC (“Interplay”) is registered as an investment adviser with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Registration of an investment adviser does not imply any level of skill or training. Information about the qualifications and business practices of Interplay is available on the SEC’s website at www.adviserinfo.sec.gov._ Interplay only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or is excluded or exempted from registration requirements. Offering of asset management services through Interplay is pursuant to an investment advisory agreement. The views expressed in this podcast/vodcast are subject to change based on market and other conditions. The podcast/vodcast may contain certain statements that may be deemed forward looking statements. Please note that any such statements are not guarantees of any future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those projected. Any projections, market outlooks, or estimates are based upon certain assumptions and should not be construed as indicative of actual events that will occur. Information communicated during the podcast/vodcast does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice but is limited to the dissemination of general market information. A professional adviser (Read more...)

A Tough Weekend

by Om Malik
This post is by Om Malik from On my Om

After three decades of being part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem — as a reporter, writer, entrepreneur, and investor — I thought I had seen it all. The boom-bust cycles, stock market manias, startup insanity, attack on America itself, and the most significant financial calamity in nearly a century — living through history prepares you for every eventuality. Your own struggle with mortality prepares you for the unpredictability of everything. You embrace the impermanence and become one with it. And despite all that, you experience what Silicon Valley has experienced this weekend — a sense of helplessness, a feeling of dread, and, more importantly, a sadness about the fragility of our community.

This past week, the federal regulators took over Silicon Valley Bank. I won’t repeat what has been reported in the media (Insider and Axios have ongoing coverage.) I won’t share how we got there — these two links explain the problem quite well. However, what I will do is share what I am feeling — this might be the worst weekend I have experienced as part of the technology community. 

The bad news was like a marionette outside a car dealership when the dot bomb hit, swaying, falling, and rising with the shifting winds. The exodus, painful as it was, played out over a long period. It was quickly superseded by the American Tragedy of 9/11 when we as a country lost ourselves. The 2008 financial crisis was another rude reminder that Silicon Valley wasn’t as (Read more...)

The Why of Tech Layoffs

by Om Malik
This post is by Om Malik from On my Om

pink arrow neon sign
Photo by Ussama Azam on Unsplash

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that “tech layoffs” have been on my mind, and I wrote a column for The Spectator to explain “the why of these layoffs.” An unprecedented boom in Silicon Valley that started with the once-in-a-generation convergence of three mega trends: mobile, social, and cloud computing, has peaked. It started in 2010, and it has been bananas around here for the past decade or so. The FAANG+Microsoft companies saw their revenues go from $196 billion to over $1.5 Trillion. Let that sink in. Booming stocks helped create an environment of excess like never before. 

The companies got into the business of what Paul Kedrosky calls “people hoarding.” The pandemic and the resulting growth revved up the hiring machine even more. The over-hiring of talent has led to wage inflation, which had a ripple effect across the entire technology ecosystem. Technology insiders are happy to tell non-tech companies to use data and automation as tools to plan their future. It is easier to preach than practice. 

Why does Google need close to 200,000 employees? Or does Microsoft need 225,000 people? Salesforce, till recently, had about 73,500 employees. Profitable as these companies have been, it is also clear that they have become sloppy and bloated. I don’t want to undermine the misfortunes of those losing jobs. A lot of the blame is on the leaders of these companies, who were asleep at the wheel. The reality is that when it comes to business, (Read more...)

Visualizing Tech Company Layoffs in 2022

by Nick Routley
This post is by Nick Routley from Visual Capitalist

tech layoffs in 2022

Visualizing Tech Company Layoffs in 2022

Layoffs are happening so frequently in 2022 that everyone from Crunchbase to Indian tech website Inc42 are now keeping track.

There is even a standalone website tracking all tech layoffs in the United States.

For the purposes of this infographic, we’ve used data from trueup.io which includes a mix of U.S. and international tech companies that have let workers go in 2022.

A Thousand Cuts: Mass Layoffs by Tech Companies

Layoffs are having an impact on the entire tech industry, and the phenomenon is global. Here are some of the most high-profile examples of mass layoffs in 2022:

Meta: The social media giant faces competition from upstarts like TikTok, as well as a pool of ad dollars that is shrinking in the face of a faltering economy. Although this reduction in headcount is painful for Meta, it’s worth considering a more broad perspective. In close to two decades of doing business, these will be the company’s first wide-scale job cuts.

Twitter: Though Meta wins with sheer volume of cuts, Twitter’s mass layoffs are surely the most dramatic. In early November, the company’s iconoclastic new owner, Elon Musk, slashed 50% of the workforce, and soon after, thousands of contractors also suddenly lost their jobs. Estimating how many employees remain at the company will remain a challenge until the dust settles.

Byju’s: Layoffs are not just confined to the United States. India’s sizable tech sector is also facing cuts. EdTech giant, Byju’s, laid off 2,500 employees (Read more...)

Visualized: The Top Feeder Schools into Silicon Valley

by Carmen Ang
This post is by Carmen Ang from Visual Capitalist

Visualized: The Top Feeder Schools into Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is one of the largest and most prominent tech hubs in the world. It accounts for about one-third of America’s national investment capital and it houses the headquarters of over 30 companies in the Fortune 1000.

Given its world-class reputation, it’s the dream of many tech workers to land a job in a Silicon Valley company. But what’s the best route for getting there?

While there is certainly no clear-cut path, one way to try and answer this question is by looking at the universities and colleges that Silicon Valley employees graduate from.

This interactive map by ​Stephanie Cristea shows the top feeder schools to some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley.

A Look at The Top 30 Schools

The data for this graphic comes from a study by College Transitions, which looks at the top feeder schools for 12 different companies with employees in Silicon Valley, including Twitter, Alphabet, DocuSign, Meta, and eight other large businesses.

Using publicly available data from LinkedIn, the study looked at more than 70,000 entry level engineers and IT employees at these 12 different companies, and identified where they received their undergraduate degree.

Here are the findings of the top 30 feeder schools across all 12 companies:

Rank (Total)Institution# EmployedTop Employer
1Carnegie Mellon University1,356Google
2University of Southern California1,252Google
3University of California, Berkeley1,212Google
4Georgia Institute of Technology1,094Microsoft
(Read more...)

The Biggest Tech Talent Hubs in the U.S. and Canada

by Nick Routley
This post is by Nick Routley from Visual Capitalist

Visualizing the biggest tech talent hubs in the U.S. and Canada

The Biggest Tech Talent Hubs in the U.S. and Canada

The tech workforce just keeps growing. In fact, there are now an estimated 6.5 million tech workers between the U.S. and Canada — 5.5 million of which work in the United States.

This infographic draws from a report by CBRE to determine which tech talent markets in the U.S. and Canada are the largest. The data looks at total workforce in the sector, as well as the change in tech worker population over time in various cities.

The report also classifies which metro areas and regions can rightly be considered tech hubs in the first place, by looking at a variety of factors including cost of living, average educational attainment, and tech employment levels as a share of different industries.

The Top Tech Hubs in the U.S.

Silicon Valley, in California’s Bay Area, remains the most prominent (and expensive) U.S. tech hub, with a talent pool of nearly 380,000 tech workers.

Here’s a look at the top tech talent markets in the country in terms of total worker population:

🇺🇸 MarketTotal Tech Talent% Talent Growth (2016-2021)
SF Bay Area378,87013%
New York Metro344,5203%
Washington D.C.259,3106%
Los Angeles235,80010%
Seattle189,57032%
Dallas/Ft. Worth187,95015%
Chicago167,5606%
Boston166,4502%
Atlanta145,0807%
Denver117,62023%
Philadelphia115,4507%
Minneapolis100,9905%
Phoenix99,60018%
Houston98,930-2%
Detroit93,7705%
Austin84,68021%
Baltimore79,0008%
San Diego77,78016%
Raleigh/Durham (Read more...)

3 Companies Now Make Up 50% of U.S. Ad Revenues

by Aran Ali
This post is by Aran Ali from Visual Capitalist

Big techs growing advertising revenue market share

The Briefing

  • Collectively, Amazon, Facebook, and Google make over $112 billion in advertising revenues
  • Two-thirds of ads in the U.S. are now digital

3 Companies Now Make Up 50% of U.S. Ad Revenues

Every year in the U.S., CFOs and marketing executives gather to allocate a portion of company funds towards advertising budgets. Today, on average, over half of those U.S. ad dollars end up in the deep pockets of just three tech stocks—Amazon, Google, and Facebook.

The advertising landscape is changing beyond recognition. Today’s data takes a closer look at annual U.S. advertising dollars, where Big Tech stocks continue to grow their presence.

The Ad Dollars in 2020

The U.S. is home to some of the biggest advertising spenders in the world. Despite a decline due to the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. advertising spend was worth just over $225 billion in 2020.

The Big Tech ad triopoly made roughly $120 billion of this, and are taking up more market share with every year. One reason for this is the industry’s move towards digital ads, which now make up almost two-thirds of all ad spending.

An Unlikely Competitor

Big Tech stocks like Google and Facebook are well known pure plays on the advertising space. However, Amazon’s inclusion may come as a surprise. Typically known for their ecommerce business, Amazon now also makes over $16 billion in ad revenue each year.

But it wasn’t always like this. Prior to 2015, the digital ad space was a duopoly consisting of just Facebook (Read more...)

In its first funding in 7 years, profitable fintech Lower raises $100M Series A led by Accel

by Mary Ann Azevedo

Lower, an Ohio-based home finance platform, announced today it has raised $100 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel.

This round is notable for a number of reasons. First off, it’s a large Series A even by today’s standards. The financing also marks the previously bootstrapped Lower’s first external round of funding in its seven-year history. Lower is also something that is kind of rare these days in the startup world: profitable. Silicon Valley-based Accel has a history of backing profitable, bootstrapped companies, having also led large Series A rounds for the likes of 1Password, Atlassian, Qualtrics, Webflow, Tenable and Galileo (which went on to be acquired by SoFi). 

In fact, Galileo founder Clay Wilkes introduced the VC firm to Dan Snyder, Lower’s founder and CEO. The two companies have a few things in common besides being profitable: they were both bootstrapped for years before taking institutional capital and both have headquarters outside of Silicon Valley.

“We were immediately intrigued because Ohio-based Lower echoes both of these themes,” said Accel partner John Locke, who led the firm’s investment in Lower and is taking a seat on the company’s board as part of the investment. “Like Galileo, Lower will be one of the most successful bootstrapped fintech companies globally. The combination of a company built in a nontraditional region across the globe and a bootstrapped company reminds us of [other] companies we have partnered with for a large Series A.”

There were other unnamed participants in (Read more...)

Meet Justos, the new Brazilian insurtech that just got backing from the CEOs of 7 unicorns

by Mary Ann Azevedo

Here in the U.S. the concept of using driver’s data to decide the cost of auto insurance premiums is not a new one.

But in markets like Brazil, the idea is still considered relatively novel. A new startup called Justos claims it will be the first Brazilian insurer to use drivers’ data to reward those who drive safely by offering “fairer” prices.

And now Justos has raised about $2.8 million in a seed round led by Kaszek, one of the largest and most active VC firms in Latin America. Big Bets also participated in the round along with the CEOs of seven unicorns including Assaf Wand, CEO and co-founder of Hippo Insurance; David Velez, founder and CEO of Nubank; Carlos Garcia, founder and CEO Kavak; Sergio Furio, founder and CEO of Creditas; Patrick Sigris, founder of iFood and Fritz Lanman, CEO of ClassPass. Senior executives from Robinhood, Stripe, Wise, Carta and Capital One also put money in the round.

Serial entrepreneurs Dhaval Chadha, Jorge Soto Moreno and Antonio Molins co-founded Justos, having most recently worked at various Silicon Valley-based companies including ClassPass, Netflix and Airbnb.

“While we have been friends for a while, it was a coincidence that all three of us were thinking about building something new in Latin America,” Chadha said. “We spent two months studying possible paths, talking to people and investors in the United States, Brazil and Mexico, until we came up with the idea of creating an insurance company that can modernize the sector, starting (Read more...)

Meet Justos, the new Brazilian insurtech that just got backing from the CEOs of 7 unicorns

by Mary Ann Azevedo

Here in the U.S. the concept of using driver’s data to decide the cost of auto insurance premiums is not a new one.

But in markets like Brazil, the idea is still considered relatively novel. A new startup called Justos claims it will be the first Brazilian insurer to use drivers’ data to reward those who drive safely by offering “fairer” prices.

And now Justos has raised about $2.8 million in a seed round led by Kaszek, one of the largest and most active VC firms in Latin America. Big Bets also participated in the round along with the CEOs of seven unicorns including Assaf Wand, CEO and co-founder of Hippo Insurance; David Velez, founder and CEO of Nubank; Carlos Garcia, founder and CEO Kavak; Sergio Furio, founder and CEO of Creditas; Patrick Sigris, founder of iFood and Fritz Lanman, CEO of ClassPass. Senior executives from Robinhood, Stripe, Wise, Carta and Capital One also put money in the round.

Serial entrepreneurs Dhaval Chadha, Jorge Soto Moreno and Antonio Molins co-founded Justos, having most recently worked at various Silicon Valley-based companies including ClassPass, Netflix and Airbnb.

“While we have been friends for a while, it was a coincidence that all three of us were thinking about building something new in Latin America,” Chadha said. “We spent two months studying possible paths, talking to people and investors in the United States, Brazil and Mexico, until we came up with the idea of creating an insurance company that can modernize the sector, starting (Read more...)