- It’s about to get ugly for the tech industry.
- Startups and public companies are readying for a wave of cost-cutting and layoffs amid rough market conditions.
- Inflation is soaring, public market valuations are dropping, and venture funding is drying up.
A lot can change in a few months.
In January, buzzy B2B financial-services startup MainStreet flew its entire staff to Maui for a weeklong working vacation at a glitzy Hawaiian resort. It had raised $60 million in a Series A funding round in 2021, and was gearing up for a similarly hefty Series B in the coming months, company executives told employees.
But a month later, Russia rolled its tanks into Ukraine, exacerbating economic upheaval across the globe and feeding a growing pessimism about the economic stability of the tech sector. When MainStreet’s Series B materialized it was significantly smaller than envisioned, and earlier this week the company laid off around 50 employees — roughly a third of its total staff, as Insider previously reported.