Sina Technology News Beijing time on the evening of January 3rd, according to reports, the layoffs in the United States in 2022 will cause more than 100,000 people to lose their jobs, but this will also give birth to a new wave of entrepreneurship. These potential entrepreneurs have unique advantages in terms of operations and connections, and some venture capital is already eager to try.
Nic Szerman (Nic Szerman) lost his job at Facebook parent company Meta in November last year, just two months after he officially started, becoming one of the victims of Meta’s 13% layoffs.
A few days later, Sherman was back to work seeking investment for his company, Nulink. Nulink, a blockchain-based payment company, has sought funding from startup accelerator Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency fund.
The 24-year-old Sherman said: “Although it may sound counterintuitive, this layoff really puts me in a very good position. I didn’t have to return the signing bonus, and I got four months salary. Now I have time to focus on my projects.”
Venture capitalists say Sherman is one of a wave of potential entrepreneurs emerging from the ashes of the Silicon Valley layoffs in the second half of 2022. U.S. tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and Snap have laid off more than 150,000 workers, according to Layoff.fyi, a website that tracks job losses in the tech sector.
While overall global venture capital funding totals fell 33% to $483 billion in 2022, “early-stage funding” was strong, raising $37.4 billion through so-called angel or seed rounds, up from 2021, according to research firm PitchBook. record levels.
Venture capital is in place
Day One Ventures, a San Francisco-based early-stage venture fund, launched a new initiative in November to fund start-ups founded by laid-off tech workers, under the tagline “Fund, not fire.”
The goal of the program is to write 20 checks for $100,000 by the end of 2022. Day One Ventures says it has received more than 1,000 applications, mostly from employees who have been laid off by tech companies like Meta, Stripe and Twitter.
“We’re going to invest $2 million in 20 companies, and even if we can only find one unicorn, that’s almost going to pay off,” said Masha Bucher, co-founder of Day One Ventures. , which is a very unique opportunity for us fund managers.”
Bucher also said: “Looking back at the last economic cycle, companies like Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox were born in crisis.”
Also in November, Index Ventures, the multistage fund that has funded Facebook, Etsy and Skype, launched its Second Origins fund, which plans to invest $300 million in early-stage startups.
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley investment firm USVenture Partners and Austrian venture capital firm SpeedInvest have set aside similarly sized funds for start-ups.
The working background of a large company is an advantage
Currently, investors are mainly focusing on entrepreneurship in fields such as games and artificial intelligence. “At every stage of economic uncertainty, there is an opportunity to reset, reprioritize, and refocus energy and resources,” said Sofia Dolfe, partner at Index Ventures.
Harry Nelis, a partner at investment firm Accel, said: “Many great companies were created in relatively dark times.” In this technology layoff, Nelis has seen a new generation The emergence of adventurers.
Some in the industry say former employees of big tech companies are in a good position to start their own companies. They have seen first-hand how some of the largest companies in the world operate, and they have access to a wide range of highly skilled colleagues.
Christopher Fong (Christopher Fong) worked at Google for nearly 10 years. After leaving in 2015, he launched the “Xoogler” project, which aims to help those who are ready to start a business after leaving a technology company. Today, the organization has more than 11,000 members. Fong said experience working at a large tech company gave the founders a strong brand that they could use to reach investors, potential clients and recruit team members
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