Mountains, Mislays & Memories of the Undead ⛰️

In the realm of startups, a tale unfolds — a tale of zombies. 

Not the kind with undead creatures in an apocalypse movie, but the kind that kills a founder’s dream. 

Say you're the founder of a small but promising startup, scoring big funding from a well-known VC. Everyone's thrilled – your team, the VC, everyone sees your startup as a potential unicorn.

But time passes, and your startup goes nowhere. Though not dead, it loses its sparkle. It's covering costs, making some money, maybe growing a bit, but it's not relevant anymore. It's clear now that the exponential growth VCs want isn't happening. 

You can't make the returns investors want, and you can't get more funding because your startup is overvalued; But you're not totally broke.

You just fade into irrelevance. Because you’re a zombie startup. 

When we think of startup failure, we often picture big, dramatic crashes like Theranos. But in reality, most failing businesses just quietly fade away. Think Evernote, Quora, Flipkart, ISIS (the mobile wallet), Blackberry. 

Why do they fade away? Lack of growth is a biggie – these startups promise huge growth but can't deliver, maybe because they can't attract a big audience or the management isn't effective. Then there's fierce competition – new startups pop up every day, making it hard to stay in the spotlight. Internal conflicts, especially among co-founders, also lead to failure. When fights happen, some founders might bail, leaving the rest struggling without enough equity or know-how.

Despite the 31% growth in EV sales last year, the momentum in the electric vehicle sector seems to be waning. 

Case in point: Mercedes-Benz announced a 5-year delay in its electrification goals last week, Toyota is keeping its focus on its hybrid lineup, and Apple is giving up entirely on its not-so-secret car project.

Quite unsurprising when you think about all the problems we’ve had with EVs in the last two years. 

• EVs struggle with reliability due to charging, battery issues.
• There’s the fire of EVs catching fire across India (a huge market for car manufacturers). 
• A survey by Consumer Reports, found that EVs from 2021 to 2023 encountered nearly 80% more problems than did conventional vehicles.

But this slowdown is not merely impacting established automakers; it's proving to be a formidable impediment for cash-hungry EV startups reliant on new capital and investors to achieve scalability.

Rivian, for instance, has announced no plans for production growth this year, accompanied by a 10% reduction in its workforce. Lucid, despite three price cuts in seven months, is scaling back its production target to a mere 9,000 cars this year. Even well-known players like Volvo are withdrawing financial support from Polestar, leaving the struggling EV manufacturer dependent on its Chinese parent company, Geely. 

Bitcoin had a monster February, witnessing a more than 40% increase and reaching heights not seen since 2020. The cryptocurrency generated such fervor that Coinbase faced disruptions on Wednesday, citing increased traffic leading to errors in various user actions.

Reason? 

The impending "halving," set to reduce the bitcoin rewards for computers solving intricate math problems to mine new coins. This event typically benefits bitcoin holders, as heightened interest tends to propel the asset's price higher.

However, the most profitable investments in crypto haven’t necessarily been direct investments in bitcoin. Trading exchange Coinbase and miner Marathon Digital Holdings have outpaced the cryptocurrency, boasting gains of 59% and 45%, respectively. 

And the positive trend isn't exclusive to dedicated industry players. The entire crypto market — even the smaller coins — are sitting on a mountain right now. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Group reported a four-fold increase in trading activity for its cryptocurrency futures products since fall, signalling heightened interest in bitcoin ETFs among major market players. Similarly, Robinhood, during an earnings call, revealed that one in 20 of its bitcoin investors is entering the cryptocurrency through an ETF. 

✌️ Redditors' Benefit -  Reddit is reportedly planning to offer 75,000 of its most active users the opportunity to buy shares at the IPO price when the company goes public next month.

🤑 We're Set To Be Rich - Millennials will become the wealthiest generation ever — and it could turn investing upside down.

🫧 Bubble To Rival The 90s - The top 10 companies in the S&P 500 are more overvalued than the top 10 companies were during the 1990's tech bubble.

🤔 Can You Identify It? - A 17-second clip of an unidentified 80s hit is still baffling the internet 3 years later

❎ Shutting Things Down - Starting March 11, Google Ads will auto-pause low-activity ad groups and shut down websites created using with Google Business Profiles. 

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Happy Life - The 25 US cities with the best quality of life.