Jos Henkens, a general partner with Advanced Technology Ventures, agrees with Meehan's analysis, saying that "most [VC] firms are still in the process of taking some lumps in their portfolios." He also dashed some cold water on anyone hoping for a return to the dotcom bubble years, when companies went from inception to public offerings before they even had revenues.
"The days of the quick buck are over, and they're not coming back," Henkens says. "Also, the days of the billion-dollar exits are over. Successful exit values now are going to be in the range of $200 million or $300 million or, if you're lucky, $500 million."
Several panelists said that VCs are hoarding their funds' cash so that their portfolio companies are assured funding for later rounds, which aren't easy to fill in these days. Martin Gagen, CEO of the U.S.-based arm of U.K. investing firm 3i Group PLC, says the result is that "it can feel to the entrepreneurs like the [venture] checkbooks have gone away."
To an almost desperate plea from one startup executive, who asked the panel "what might lead us out of this malaise," Vadasz had the most concrete response:
"The performance of the Internet, especially in the last mile, is way below what is in our PCs," he said, pointing out that there could still be an entire PC-type industry explosion in Internet technologies.
To realize the benefits of cloud-native software, an application must actually be cloud-native—designed to run in the cloud, interacting with disaggregated cloud services, fully manageable as code—to deliver the expected benefits.
By combining resources and expertise, the AI-Enabled ICT Workforce Consortium will offer a blueprint for how industries can adapt to an AI-dominated future.
IT leaders should heed the guidance of cybersecurity insurance providers who think businesses should prioritize security education, incident preparedness, regular internal audits, and ongoing vulnerability scanning and patching.
