Startup optimism

Hello from Arnhem, Holland. It’s absolutely gorgeous here… green.. trees…. farms. It’s very serene. I landed in Amsterdam yesterday morning and took an hour Uber ride our resort at Arnhem. The Dutch countryside is gorgeous. We’ll be here for a few days for our management team offsite as we plan for the year ahead. I’m writing this as I eat breakfast and will soon be going on a quick run.

I wrote a bit last week on how everything seems to be bad news these days. War, inflation, markets, political turmoil, etc. The good news is that despite everything happening in the world, we have a lot to be optimistic about.

While the public markets have been volatile with 50-80% pullbacks in growth stocks, the private markets have been chugging along. Yes, there is a slow down and contraction in valuations. The private markets are correlated to the public markets whether some people want to believe it or not. So why the optimism in the private markets?

Simple. Innovation hasn’t stopped. We have more entrepreneurs, operators, and VCs in tech than ever before. The market and geopolitical events have not stopped people from building. I witness this on a day to day basis and I read about new startups doing amazing things every single day.

There’s a lot to be worried about in the world, but builders building is not one of them. In fact, we have perhaps seen the opposite as multiples startups have shifted to helping the cause in Ukraine.

This surge in private markets have been optimistic about the future. Public markets aside, we are in for a lot of innovation in the coming next few years.