2024

I wrote a bit about the Q4 sentiment changing from cautiously optimistic to pessimistic in a matter of a few weeks. Today, I wanted to write a bit about the year ahead in 2024.

We’re headed into the new year with a lot of macro uncertainty. Interest rates are still high. There is war in Europe and the Middle East with risk of conflicts escalating. As we head into November, the public markets have been on a downward trend. On top of that, we’re heading into an election year.

In the private market space, VC fundraising is at a 10 year low. The secondary markets are nearly dead. There are a huge group of growth stage companies that may be in peril.

I hate to admit that things don’t look great heading into the new year. Yes, there’s a big backlog of companies waiting to go public. We may see the window creek open in March/April for a little bit. But that will effectively be closed again due to the election. Depending on how things go, we may see another window in November after the election ends.

For us, we’re planning on unfortunately another down year. To a certain degree, you should always plan for the worse especially at a startup. But going into 2024 will be a bit different for us. The prolonged downturn has had an impact on startup employees. We need to adjust significantly to account for the bear market sentiment.

I really hope I am wrong. I hope I can look back on this post a year from today and laugh at the stupidity I just wrote. That would be great for me, Secfi, and the entire startup ecosystem in general. Of course, we can’t plan for that, but we can hope.