China decoupling from the West is pretty scary, given that sharing and trading has a positive impact for both societies. And it should rein in speculation-it probably has already. That has had consequences on car loans and mortgages and corporate debt. That said, clearly you’ve had rates going up, which hasn’t happened in a very long time. I’ve felt that ever since my MBA macro class. There are just so many variables with macro. I also spent time tracking down Howard Marks and Stanley Druckenmiller because I think there are so few people who have proven that they have a valuable point of view on macro. My question was, “You know, if interest rates are zero, (1) your DCF model doesn’t work, and (2) it drives all kind of speculation.” And he said, “You betcha!” I even paid a massive amount of money to end up at this dinner with Warren Buffett, where we each got to ask him one question. Three or four years ago, I felt, like many others, that the really big problem was the zero-interest-rate thing, this prolonged period of near-zero interest rates. Do you agree with that? Do you think we’re entering a period of extended uncertainty?īill Gurley: It’s funny. Many people feel that the externalities affecting so many businesses-whether it’s the war in Ukraine, inflation, geopolitics, changing labor patterns-seem more complicated now than they have been in a long time. But it’s a bracing lead-in to talking about how difficult things might be for start-ups during what seems to be a time of great uncertainty.

Anyway, that wasn’t on your original list of questions. And then you’re in retweet land-you end up with two or three of them. You get 100 percent of the pain and very little gain. Yet you get all the cultural negatives of having done a layoff. You don’t get any material impact to lowering your expenses. They didīill Gurley: See, that’s the thing. Well, 23 percent is getting into a range that actually makes sense. In ’01 and ’09, you had broadscale layoffs, but only now are we starting to see them this time around. As if to prove the point, an alert just popped up on my screen: Robinhood is laying off 23 percent of its workforce.īill Gurley: Wow. To talk about start-ups at what seems to be a particularly challenging moment. Rick Tetzeli: Thanks so much for joining me An edited version of their conversation follows. Gurley recently joined Quarterly editorial director Rick Tetzeli for a wide-ranging discussion. But being realistic doesn’t necessarily mean being pessimistic: in some ways, says Gurley, this may be a great time to launch a start-up. Investors adjust to an economic slowdown and look warily ahead. Average valuations of some fundraising rounds have dropped as While many venture firms have a lot of money to invest, dealmaking has slowed considerably this year. Gurley has often been a voice of reason amid Silicon Valley overexuberance and has tweeted regularly in 2022 about the need for start-ups to be realistic about the current economic environment.

As a general partner at Benchmark, Gurley has backed a blessing of unicorns, including Grubhub, Liveops, Nextdoor, OpenTable, and, most famously, Uber. Bill Gurley is one of Silicon Valley’s most respected venture capitalists.

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