Silicon Valley is built on the promise of innovation, but for the better part of the past three years, the innovation economy has been in a coma. It all started with runaway inflation triggering the biggest hike in the price of money in a century.  The era of “zero interest rate policy” and “quantitative easing” is over. The cost of capital suddenly got expensive, lending became hard to come by, and valuations took a hit. Then came geopolitical uncertainty, with hot and cold wars erupting between nuclear weaponized states and actors. The IPO markets were shut down and regulators closed the market from technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A).  Fiscal and tax policies were in question, and unpredictable regulatory enforcement ensued. Then came “Liberation Day,” and the end of nearly a century of free-trade policies, leaving markets as uncertain as the cost of manufacturing.

The impact to the innovation economy has been a dramatic decrease in the raising of new venture capital (VC) funds and their deployment, as VC investors have been unable to distribute proceeds to investors, leaving slim pickings for startups looking for funding.