2022 began with Elizabeth Holmes, founder of health-tech company Theranos, being found guilty of fraud. It ended with the arrest of crypto-king Sam Bankman-Fried in the Bahamas. As one technology ‘visionary’ leaves the courtroom, another arrives. It’s a nice bookend to the year, but the real problem in tech today isn’t so much fraud, but misdirection.
In 2022, the sound of screeching brakes was deafening. In the previous 15 years of artificially low interest rates, too much money had been chasing too few good ideas, with speculative capital flowing to new ventures in ever-increasing desperation. This year’s rise in interest rates across the globe, in response to post-pandemic inflation, has exposed so many tech companies as duds.
Uber and WeWork had already been rumbled well before Covid hit. Both were once touted as society-changing new ventures and given astronomical valuations by investors. This was despite Uber only ever being a straightforward predatory-pricing ploy. The hope was that cheap rides, funded in part by the deep pockets of Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund, would kill off local competition.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member