???????? Hi friends!
I know I promised I’d steer clear of the weather, but… I’m British aren’t I?
After a beautiful Indian summer with temperatures hitting 30 centigrade for half of the month, we’re back to a proper British autumn – wind, rain and chilly winds.
Ah well, nothing lasts forever. Sigh.
Let’s get into this week’s happenings.
Today I look at:
???? Airtable cuts team + what’s the valuation?
???? A certain Brand gets burned
???? Following the money – where are all the millionaires going?
???? Are tech IPOs back on track?
And remember to check out this week’s Nothing Ventured pod where we take a look back at some of our guests talking about the acceleration of tech and venture in the pan African ecosystem. ????????
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Now let’s get into it.
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The Lowdown
Airtable Recalculates
I’m not the biggest fan of spreadsheet replacement tools but over the last year or so, I’ve gotten very deep into using Airtable to work as my operating system.
I use it for my CRM, dealflow pipeline, recruitment database and much more. It’s one of the few softwares that actually work with my (undiognosed) ADHD.
And in plenty of conversations I’ve had with VCs, who use it internally, they’ve told me pretty much the same thing – it works really well whilst you are still scaling up.
But, in news that broke this week, Airtable is laying off over 27% of their staff – after having laid off more than 250 back in December.
Blaming the market’s switch to chasing efficiency rather than growth at all costs, Howie Liu (Airtable’s CEO) also noted that the company will be focussing on selling into more lucrative enterprise deals rather than chasing the little user (like me).
Anand Sanwal, founder of CB Insights, argues in the post linked below that Airtable’s valuation is off – on the upper end – by close to a whopping 90% against their last valuation back in December 2021 (peak hubris).
Putting aside the negative news in itself, Anand’s thread is a really great way to understand the maths behind the valuation. Though, when challenged on the accuracy of some of his numbers, Anand doesn’t hesitate to adjust the numbers to show the recast position.
For folk like me that geek out on this kind of thing, it’s super interesting to follow the calculus and understand how some household names – at least in the venture ecosystem – have suffered from the frenzied investing of the ZIRP phenomenon.
Airtable is probably worth less than the total equity funding it has raised
I’m not talking about the $11.7B valuation it raised at in December 2021
I’m talking about it being worth less than the ~$1.4B+ in financing it has raised
Here’s the math/data
Airtable is on track for… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
— Anand Sanwal (@asanwal)
Sep 17, 2023
Brand’s Brand on the Bonfire
I’m going to be honest and say I was really not paying attention to this news at all.
That’s mainly because I rarely spend time reading around things that are happening in popular culture, and certainly don’t keep tabs on celebrity news.
There is a lot of opinion, condemnation and blanket support for Russell Brand out there, and I don’t intend to add to that. But whilst I don’t have a first hand account of what happened and therefore can’t comment, I can say that any tale of abuse is abhorrent.
Every victim, alleged or otherwise, needs to be taken seriously until events can be investigated – no person should ever be above the law.
It’s similar to one of the things that really affected me during the post-Trump (post truth) era. Even though despicable things were being admitted to, people would take a “jury’s still out” attitude and defend the undefendable.
And what we’re now seeing, which will no doubt be lambasted as cancel culture, are private platforms using their policies to cut off the reach and revenue of individuals like Russell Brand when they’re caught in the cross hairs.
We’ll see what happens as this story unfolds.
The only thing I know for sure is that even if the case is clear cut, the public response will not be.
Millionaires on the Move
I’m a huge fan of Visual Capitalist. They have some incredible data visualisations that really cause you to think.
In this article, they map the movement of high net worth individuals (HNWIs) between countries to see where all the rich folk are heading to.
In an absolute endorsement of the Brexit plan, it seems that 12,500 HNWIs (defined as having wealth over $1m) have been lost to the UK in the period between 2017 and 2022.
In 2023, the biggest losers would seem to be China and India with 20,000 HNWIs leaving those countries this year.
And where are all these wealthy individuals heading?
It would seem that popular choices are Australia, the UAE and Singapore.
I can’t say I am that surprised that these are the destinations, which are attractive due to lifestyle and/or taxation laws.
Certainly in the case of Singapore and the UAE, they’re also massively accessible hubs from which to travel in and out of.
Where would you go if you had the means and the motivation?
We’re Back, Baby…
Maybe.
Both ARM and Instacart went public over the last week or so, and so far, we haven’t seen negative sentiment in the markets.
Instacart shares traded 12% up after their filing and ARM had a lift of 25% after listing. Though their share price has come back down as analysts’ expectations suggest the company is overvalued at the moment.
Now, none of this is investment advice – I’m just highlighting what people might find of interest.
But it is important from the perspective of the venture ecosystem… If these listings go well, there’s a good chance that tech businesses will see this as an improvement in sentiment towards technology listings and may just look to list themselves.
And finally, a word from everyone’s favourite meme master…
NFT investors waiting to recover after a 99% decline
— Dr. Parik Patel, BA, CFA, ACCA Esq. (@ParikPatelCFA)
Sep 14, 2023
????And that’s a wrap for this edition of The Lowdown – I’d appreciate your feedback so just reply to this email if you’ve got something you’d like to say.
???? And if you think someone else might love this, please forward it on to them,
???? Finally, if you’re a fan of the Nothing Ventured podcast, please don’t forget to like, rate and subscribe wherever you get your pods – it really helps us spread the word.
That’s it from me so until next time…
Stay liquid 🙂
Aarish
