Early Silicon Valley startups IPO’d more but achieved profitability rarer than elsewhere

Evidence

Among the first generation of Silicon Valley venture-backed internet startups, 12.5 percent had completed IPOs by the end of 2001, compared to 7.3 percent in the rest of the country, while only 4.2 percent of valley startups attained profitability, a significantly lower proportion than in the rest of the country. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1840

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader surveillance-capitalism investor logic — growth and speculation over genuine profitability — consistent with Zuboff’s thesis across Part I. — connects to: The VC-to-IPO model dominates bio-economy discourse but not actual financing — Kean Birch, Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy:…, 34; Impatient venture money produces many startup failures and few big wins — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 228; Early internet buzz did not yet translate into commercial success — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 191 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Impatient venture money produces many startup failures and few big wins #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 228
• Early internet buzz did not yet translate into commercial success #corroborates (0.75) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 191
• Finance funds commodification experiments where only a few ventures succeed #expands (0.72) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 457