Jason M. Lemkin says a tech gold rush is happening in the Bay Area, with companies hitting unicorn status and getting higher valuations weeks later. A startup closed a unicorn round in April, then got a top-up offer at a bigger valuation. OpenAI projects 1000% growth by 2029, and even 17-year-old dropouts are raising money.
Questions this video answers
April 7 (speaker's remark).
"1000% by 2029" (as stated by the speaker).
About 15% (speaker's impression).
Chapters
This is just we, I think even in VC and lpln we live in this new news cycle. So like I had a company close a unicorn round on I think April 7th. There was actually a downturn in venture because of the nasdaq, right? We had these Trump, Trump drama. I think the stock market fell 15%, didn't it? Nasdaq or something. And then everyone was freaking out in growth stage VCs for at least three days, for at least three days. And already this company that did a unicorn round has an offer to do a top up round at an even higher valuation. So like we for like, you know, it used to be when there was a downturn or something, it would have shocks for the system for at least a few months. Right now the shock, the shock doesn't even last until the next 20 VC comes out, right? So it's just, I hear all this stuff but all I see is a gold rush. All I see is gold rush in the SF Bay Area. All I see OpenAI says they're going to grow 1000% by 2029. Everyone's just looking to make an insane amount of money and they don't care about the nickels and dimes and the casualties and they will deploy every dollar they can. I think we can talk about liquidity and all this, but I honestly think that today is a much bigger gold rush than 2021 or other times. We get like. I've never seen such a goal because this gold rush goes all the way down to high school kids. Like this gold rush is up and down the stack of, of tech and it's both fun and a little cynical and a little crazy. But it's, this is, you know, in the 2020 gold rush you had to be a crusty old B2B guy, right? That had been doing this for years or have something interesting consumer. Now every 17 year old kid is dropping out. I mean Harry, you know what this is like. But they're dropping out and they're in the gold rush and it's, it's glorious and weird and risky and full of baloney. But I've never seen anything like this Gold rush. Never.
