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When a CFO leaves a richly valued company as it conducts layoffs, it can be a sign of a bigger issue.
This was one of the things I told Nolan Church, the CEO and co-founder of Continuum, about the recent CFO resignations. We don't know why people are leaving, but it's a red flag from a recruitment standpoint.
He introduced me to the idea of zombie companies, which I appreciated as it is officially spooky this time of year. A zombie company is a company that raised a lot of money but isn't making enough money to justify its valuation. It will take a long time for us to realize that the late-stage market is full of them because many got overcapitalized and have enough runway to hide behind.
Some executive shake-ups sound louder than others. I wrote a column about CFOs, "Are CFOs OK?" The answer is yes, but CEOs. That's complex.
We are going to discuss the do-it-all startups in the rest of this newsletter. Do I need to give you a favor? You can forward it to a friend, share it on social media, and follow me on the internet.
In this week's column, I wrote about the spinoff of the vacation home ownership market called Getaway. It's difficult to convince people that they deserve a vacation. It can be difficult to convince people that they can co-own a vacation house and enjoy it at the same time.
The best way to stand out against a competitor is to do it all. I have seen a lot of startup that want the best of both worlds for consumers, and Getaway is no different.
I wonder how this meshes with the larger discussion of growth-stage startups realizing they need to focus. Is the early-stage startups about to get some time to run wild because of the cushion capital? For thought, food.
Alex and I talked to Sarah about her new business. She raised $101 million in 10 weeks for her first fund, but she thinks it took too long. Take a look at the extracts from the conversation.
The framework for interesting applications in this space is helpful when trying to figure out what she is and isn't interested in. You can see how she thinks about it.
I think you can take a very clear-eyed view to the landscape and say, what’s valuable to a customer? I think there’s one way go sort of bottoms-up, and be modality by modality, right? We can classify things. We can generate code. We can do math. We can generate images. And I think that’s an interesting one. [But] I think the way I tend to look at the world is to be interested in a set of problem domains that I know well because I know the customer well.
Nails, not hammers first. So you will see me invest in security infrastructure, developer tools, productivity applications, creative apps, generally enterprise-like sort of relational database applications that keep records, [and] verticals where I think the vertical is large, interesting and the data is affected by this, like comp bio. The reason I think that software 3.0 is a really apt term is I’m just naming certain categories of software that I know well, but I fail to see a future where all of those [categories], given the advances in compute and data and algorithms, don’t get more intelligent.
I think that there are going to be completely novel applications of AI that don’t fit well into the existing categories. Visual generation is not an existing software category. Autonomy is not a software category that exists without AI. So I think there are going to be net new application categories … but I’m following the customer more than anything else.
Sarah Guo is the image's author.
Something is happening next week. We apologize for the fact that we won't be able to get a table at Che FICO because we're already based in San Francisco.
It will be a blast, a pep talk, a realization, and a week not to be missed. You can get your tickets here.
You can use codeSTARTUPS to get a special reader discount. There is a special for those who have been laid off. You can get a free ticket to the expo if you were laid off.
Enjoy these exclusive benefits in the TC+ Lounge at Disrupt
Equity goes out three times a week and is the longest running show. We have a show called Chain Reaction and a show called Found that are focused on founder focused. The good shows that they are putting out is something that can be missed by anyone.
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Next week, the same web page?
It's N.
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