The risk is that suddenly all tech investors will want to know what's going on with all of the companies they invested in, and demand actual returns and not pixie dust and double talk.
Can you imagine if the SV bubble was held to the same expectations as real world companies? Half of the Bay Area would curl up and blow away overnight.
How big is the frothy part of the SV tech (and tech adjacent) landscape relative to the tech landscape as a whole though--much less relative to the total Bay Area economy?
It looks to me as if companies that seem to have no credible business plan are already starting to be punished. I don't doubt that scrutiny will probably increase further and people should probably think harder about joining startups that don't seem to have a path to profitability.
But I expect something like a major downturn in ad tech would have a much greater impact than some will-never-be-profitable startups circling the drain.
Can you imagine if the SV bubble was held to the same expectations as real world companies? Half of the Bay Area would curl up and blow away overnight.