When it became clear that the public market had forever descended from the peaks of 2021, venture investors decided to break camp and head downhill as well, advising their portfolio companies to focus on lowering their burn because capital had suddenly become expensive.

Why the focus on cost-cutting? Because conserving cash is an easy way for startups to postpone fundraising, giving them more time to both increase their revenue and potentially wait for tech valuations to recover.

But new data indicates investor preference is moving akin to a pendulum: They wanted startups to scramble and change their focus from a “growth at any cost” mindset to becoming profitable at low cost when things went to hell, and now they’re already looking for growth again.

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For startup founders, the rapid change in investor preferences may feel like a whipsaw. But such an evolution in market preferences is actually rather logical and, frankly, somewhat boring in how it plays out.

To illustrate, let’s first look at the data, and then let’s talk about what startups should take away from the information. After all, it’s the weekend, so we can stretch our legs a little. To work!

What the data says

The cloud team at Bessemer — the venture fund that built the public market cloud index that we often use as an indicator of tech valuations — has put together another yearly report that came out this week. (Website here; Slideshare pullout here.)

Tech investors’ obsession over profit is already waning by Alex Wilhelm originally published on TechCrunch

https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/17/tech-investors-obsession-profit-waning/