You’re right, there are much less opportunities around now. But the quality of those that still exist is much, much higher in my opinion. The “borderline” business models that are just-about-to-work are no longer working, because they were all based on the assumption that the good year will be followed by another good year. And as the bull market went on and on, more and more businesses were relying on such assumptions. What we ended up with is a huge proportion of businesses with little to no cash reserves, high debt and very little profit in sight. The thinking goes, if you have a reasonably profitable business, why not scale it? Say you have a coffee shop. Things are going alright, and because the economy is booming (thanks to very loose monetary policies, low interest rates, stimulus etc) there is no shortage of investors who are happy to fund your expansion, or buy you out. So every other coffee shop is now a chain with high debt and high operational expenses, because everything is in leasing, not owned. For every business you can think of, there can be such“pumped up” equivalent.

Now, specifically about tech startups. Indeed, perhaps 80% of typical startup ideas will no longer fly. Only a few months ago hundreds of millions were routinely injected into clones of uber, skyscanner and booking.com — well, no longer. Today most investors will laugh at you if you come up with another ride hailing idea. But that only means that now is the time to start inventing new things, again. There are still plenty of problems not solved, jobs to be done. Perhaps more than ever. Think of just one — office communication. Suddenly everyone now is using Zoom and realising that their businesses are completely unprepared to remote-only working despite all the tools being there. The pandemic will be over soon but this realisation will stay. Just like fintechs and challenger banks boomed after the 2008 crisis when the big banks demonstrated how unfit they were for the modern environment, many other areas as big or even bigger will open up after this crisis is over.