7/29/2023 0 Comments Market crash 2000One black-tie work party I attended caused a run on several area tuxedo rental shops. Still, our team-building exercises included cooking classes, go-kart races and trips to local driving ranges. The very startups that offered in-house massages, catered meals, laundry service and oil changes in the parking lot were also purchasing Super Bowl ads and freeway billboards as their stock prices fell and quarterly losses mounted. I was clueless about startup operations, financing and venture capital, but I didn’t need to be an economist to realize that most of the companies I worked for lacked solid fundamentals. The apartment complex my employer used for temporary housing became my home for several years a co-worker who’d moved cross-country euthanized his cat because he and his pregnant partner were unable to find a pet-friendly landlord. So many companies were flocking to the Bay Area that the vacancy rate for rental housing was less than 1% when I arrived. I was part of the first wave of tech workers who flooded San Francisco during the dot-com era. In our conversation, Barber spoke about how founders can better align with investors and employees while managing uncertainty, the dangers of growing too quickly and the economic, social and emotional impacts created when so many companies close their doors at once. During a recent Twitter Space, M13 Partner Anna Barber and I looked back at the dot-com crash in search of lessons operators can use to avoid missteps founders have made in past downturns.
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