Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

On the evening of January 3, Beijing time, it is reported that the massive layoffs in the United States in 2022 led to the loss of more than 100,000 jobs, but it also spawned a new wave of entrepreneurship. These potential entrepreneurs have unique advantages in operation and networking, and some venture capitalists are already eager to try.

Nick Sherman (Nic Szerman) lost his job at Meta, the parent company of Facebook, in November last year, just two months after he officially joined the job, becoming one of the victims of 13 per cent layoffs at Meta.

A few days later, Sherman returned to work, seeking investment for his company, Nulink. Nulink, a payment company based on block technology chains, has sought financial support from start-up accelerator Y Combinator and cryptocurrency funds from Andreessen Horowitz.

"while this may sound counterintuitive, this layoff does put me in a very good position," said the 24-year-old Sherman. I didn't have to return the signing bonus and got four months' salary, and now I have time to focus on my project. "

Venture capitalists say Sherman is one of a group of potential entrepreneurs emerging from the ruins of massive layoffs in Silicon Valley in the second half of 2022. Us tech giants, including Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and Snap, have laid off more than 150000 workers, according to Layoff.fyi, a website that tracks unemployment in the technology industry.

Although overall global venture capital financing fell 33 per cent to $483 billion in 2022, "early stage financing" performed strongly, raising $37.4 billion through so-called angel or seed rounds, the same as the record level in 2021, according to PitchBook, a research firm.

Day One Ventures, an early-stage venture fund with venture capital in San Francisco, launched a new initiative in November to fund start-ups created by laid-off workers in the technology industry, with the slogan "funding, not firing".

The goal of the plan is to write 20 checks for $100000 by the end of 2022. Day One Ventures says it has received more than 1000 applications, most of them from employees who have been fired by technology companies such as Meta, Stripe and Twitter.

Masha Bucher, co-founder of Day One Ventures, said: "We will invest $2 million in 20 companies, and even if we can only find one unicorn, it will almost pay back. I think this is a very unique opportunity for our fund managers."

Buhe also said: "looking back on the last economic cycle, companies like Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox were born in the crisis."

Also in November, Index Ventures, the multi-stage fund that funded Facebook, Etsy and Skype, launched its Second Origins fund, which plans to invest $300m in early-stage start-ups.

At the same time, Silicon Valley investment firm U.S.Venture Partners and Austrian venture capital firm SpeedInvest have set aside similar amounts of money for start-ups.

The working background of large companies is the current advantage, and investors mainly focus on entrepreneurship in areas such as games and artificial intelligence. "at every stage of economic uncertainty, there is an opportunity to reset, reprioritize, refocus and refocus resources," said Sofia Dolfe, a partner at Index Ventures.

"A lot of great companies were founded in relatively dark times," says Harry Nelis, a partner at Accel, an investment firm. In this technological layoff, Nellis has seen the emergence of a new generation of adventurers.

Some industry insiders say former employees of large technology companies are in a good position to start their own companies. They have seen first-hand how some of the world's largest companies operate and have come into contact with a large number of highly skilled colleagues.

Christopher Fong, who worked at Google for nearly a decade, launched the "Xoogler" project after leaving in 2015 to help people who are ready to start a business after leaving technology companies. Today, the organization has more than 11000 members. According to Christopher Fang, experience at large technology companies gives these founders a strong brand that can be used to reach investors, potential customers and recruit team members.

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