And over here, we have the Drama-Bitch habitat. If you listen carefully, you can hear its over-exaggerated mating call. This species is interesting because it evolved a unique vision mechanism: it can only see the world in extreme shades of white and black. Scientists currently think this is due to generations of inbreeding. When threatened with any kind of nuance, it resorts to the loud braying from which it gets its name; an overdramatic lament of how the world will turn into a literal hellscape if it doesn’t get its way. It’s incapable of understanding how absurd it sounds, and insists on being taken seriously, even though its wailings are too idiotic to even begin to engage with.
HEY! SIR! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON’T TAP ON THE GLASS! You get it started and it’ll disappear into its pillow fort and scream literally all day long!
Moving on…
I am not a finance guy; this is my kindergarten-level understanding of the situation:
When the interest rates were hovering down around 0%, it was a no-brainer for VC firms to shotgun money out to everyone who walked past their office building. Most VC money doesn’t come from some rich dude’s pocket; it comes from banks and hedge funds and other deeply-market-tied entities. If any one startup they’ve invested in can win the profit lottery, the VCers will massively beat the rate of return they’d get for anything else. One big success can cover a dozen small failures, and, anyway, a business isn’t a failure until it’s a failure.
Now that interest rates are rapidly moving higher, those startup investments are less of a good deal. VC money is more expensive. VC firms are starting to close out their positions on start-ups that aren’t beating them market, because they want to stick their money somewhere more reliably profitable.