Where does VC go from here?

Press cycles about million-dollar fund-raises and billion-dollar valuations are short-lived and targeted at aspiring entrepreneurs, not people like your customers. Building your audience that way doesn’t work, because a months-old startup has nothing to say, besides that a few rich people gave them some money. Trust me, I know.

The last decade showed that questionable business models can subsist for a long time (and even flourish) when capital is abundant. Thirteen years after its founding, Uber is still figuring out how to be profitable: the company’s gross margins actually declined seven percentage points over the past three years, and the net profit margin is -3%.