Opinion
How Silicon Valley Can Stretch Its Dollars
With no end to our economic doldrums in sight, founders and investors should look to smaller markets for inspiration.
Silicon Valley was perhaps the world’s greatest beneficiary of nearly 15 years of extraordinarily loose monetary policy. From this fertile mix, West Coast venture capitalists and financial institutions spun a finely tuned ecosystem that excelled at converting cheap capital into high valuations.
But with interest rates high and quite possibly still rising, venture capital funding declining and investors’ path to an exit largely blocked, the difficulties facing that ecosystem today are far more significant than a mere kink in the money hose. The conditions Silicon Valley traditionally relied on to scale consumer digital platforms have largely collapsed.
