elarquitecto
PPCC sal del cuerpo del Arquitecto! Cierto, es todo la energía. Está la gente CANINA. Pero Canina total en Suecia. Se nota en muchas cosas. Los bares si están animados, pero el tema pisos se ha quedado flatliner total. Veo un parón de contratación muy serio.
Y ojo que los grandes "unicorns" tech parece que empiezan a reventar (y despedir) o las van a ver muy negras porque necesitan grandes inversiones para mantener sus planes de crecimiento y las inversiones están muy asustadizas por alguna razón.
https://www.svd.se/a/G3E0W6/techbaksmallan-ar-har-nu-borjar-uppsagningarna
The hangover is here - now the redundancies begin
Björn Jeffery
The tech crash on the stock market has domino effects throughout the startup ecosystem. The hangover from the high values of recent years is here - and now the redundancies in Sweden are starting to come.
The stock market crash for the tech companies came quickly and was merciless. Zoom, Sinch, Peloton and Truecaller have all plummeted over 40 percent of their market capitalization since the beginning of the year. Even giants like Apple, Google and Microsoft have lost about 20 percent. The hedge fund Tiger Global lost SEK 170 billion on its holdings - only during the first quarter of the year.
To understand what this means for tech companies, you need to take a closer look at how the ecosystem behind them works. When venture capitalists make investments in startups, they are usually classified as "rounds". It used to start with "seed round" or "seed round" - the first money invested in a company. You sow a seed that can grow into a real company. Then came round A, B, C and so on. In the end, depending on how the company developed, one could possibly reach the letter combination IPO - "initial public offering", or stock exchange listing.
But it quickly became more messy than that. In a tougher competition, venture capital wanted to enter the best companies earlier, and a new round emerged - "pre seed". In addition, the values increased steadily in the rest of the rounds. An investment that was previously considered large enough for an A-round could in some cases already come in seed.
Inflation came to the startup world early. But it is only now that it is beginning to be felt, in combination with rising interest rates.
The big tech crash on the stock market has forced a new, tougher world for raising capital. This is most clearly seen among so-called cloud and SaaS companies (software-as-a-service), a kind of service company that sells via subscription. The Bessemer Cloud index measures how listed companies in this category are valued, and the curve shows a huge fall. One way to value companies is to multiply revenues and obtain a company value. The median company was traded last year in May at 14.38 times revenue. The corresponding figure from May this year is 6.46. This means that prices have more than halved in one year.
The halving also spreads to companies outside the stock exchange. The result of the hardening stock market climate will be increased pressure on startups in later stages - around B / C rounds and above. As they are closer to either a stock exchange listing or a sale, the comparison prices on the stock exchange become more relevant.
If you - as is the case for several large startups in Sweden - have raised money on very high private valuations, the companies can easily end up in a foxhole.
They can not be listed on the stock exchange, because the stock market climate is not favorable.
They can not bring in more money for a higher valuation than the previous round because no one will want to invest in valuations from 2020–2021.
They can not continue to invest in unhindered growth because the money will then run out.
What do you do?
An alternative is to do as the digital health center Kry and tighten the belt. On Tuesday, the company announced that they will lay off around 100 people, about 10 percent of the workforce. "We need to react to market dynamics and we need to be more careful with our capital," writes the company's CEO, Johannes Schildt in a statement. Taking the company towards profitability more quickly is a way of parrying the outside world.
Another option is to bring in new money, albeit at a lower valuation than before. However, this creates increased dilution in ownership among existing shareholders and is thus not a popular alternative. Venture capitalists in Stockholm say that many rounds of financing are dragging on right now, and that the valuations for companies in later stages have almost halved compared with a year ago.
The consequence of a lower valuation may also affect the staff of these companies. Many startups today have various option programs that allow their employees to take part in the company's success by becoming shareholders themselves. The options are included in the staff's total compensation, in addition to salary and other benefits. As long as the valuation has only gone up, this has been very profitable for many in the startup world. But with lower company valuations, it is possible that the options become worthless, and a large part of the employees' compensation is completely lost. The possibility that an option will not be worth anything is certainly part of its design, but many younger employees are now experiencing this for the first time.
In recent years, an increasing number of companies have achieved unicorn status - a valuation of over one billion dollars. It has been seen as a proof of success and a milestone on the road to becoming a giant company. After the tech race, these unicorns are now standing and wondering if the valuation was then worth what it may cost now.
A high valuation can become a yoke that you need to handle. A declining investment climate will force many companies to cut back sharply, to extend the time they have before they need new money. But conversion takes time and can be expensive. If you have been unlucky with the timing, the cash can be meager, and time is short to make big changes. Then it is not enough to cut back. Some unicorns will probably not survive at all.