金持ち連中はなぜくだらない資産をやりとりしているんだ？
今回は「金持ち連中はなぜくだらない資産をやりとりしているんだ？」についてご紹介します。
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スタートアップとマーケットの週刊ニュースレター「The TechCrunch Exchange」へようこそ。
準備はOK？ここではお金の話、スタートアップの話、IPOの噂話などをお伝えする。
大変な数週間だった。Robinhood（ロビンフッド）が、荒れ狂う市場の中でその手数料無料モデルを維持するために新しい資金調達を行い、他の新興取引業者たちはそのビジネスモデルを変更し、さらに多くのことが起きていた。しかし、こうしたスタートアップの世界の中に、どうにも腑に落ちない動きがあった。なぜ一部のお金持ちたちは、下らない資産の取引をしているのだろうか？
個人投資家が自分の取引アイデアを実践するのは構わない、これまでもそうだったし、これからもそうだろう。いつになっても変わることはない。しかし私たちは、Elon Musk（イーロン・マスク）氏やChamath Palihapitiya（チャミス・パリハピティヤ）氏のような人たちが、彼らの幅広い市場への影響力を利用して、一般の人たちに対して直接的または間接的に、愚かな取引を奨励しているところを目にしてきた。それは多くの一般人には、失っても構わないとはとても言えない額の損失が出るかもしれない取引だ。
たとえばマスク氏が繰り返しTwitter（ツイッター）に登場してはDoge（ドージ）を称賛することを考えてほしい。Dogeは極めて不安定でほとんど価値を持たない冗談のような暗号通貨の1つだ。あるいは、パリハピティヤ氏が公にGameStop（ゲームショップ）にお金を注ぎ込んだことを考えてほしい。彼は他の人たちよりもより良く準備を整えてそれに臨んだ。彼はそうして金を稼いだ。だがGameStopカジノをプレイした人の多くは、それほど幸運ではなかった。多くの人が余剰資金以上の損失を出している。
もちろんそれは買い手の自己責任だ。しかし私は、抜け目がなく資本力もある人間が、普通の人たちを、長期的なファンダメンタルズに裏打ちされていない、短期的リターンを狙った資産に誘導するのは好きではない。やれやれ。
そうそう、公衆への迷惑というテーマといえば、Hawley（ホーリー）上院議員は先週、大手ハイテク企業による中小企業の買収を阻止するアイデアを発表し、注目を集めている（同議員はトランプ元大統領支持者で先の米議事堂での騒乱にもひと役買っている）。さすが反乱に寛容な議員さんだけあって、とてつもなくまじめな提案というわけではなく、ユーモラスと言えそうなほど曖昧な書き方がされている。
しかし、私の個人的なブログで書いたように、大抵はうんざりさせるようなこの政治家から出てくる意見の何が問題なのかといえば、大規模なハイテク企業による小さい会社の買収を制限しようとする動きに、超党派的な関心があるということなのだ。スタートアップにとってこれは良い報せとはいえない。M&Aによるエグジットはスタートアップにとって重要な流動性イベントであり、最も多くの資金を持っているのは大企業だからだ。
スタートアップの評価額が下がることは、うれしくはない。だが米国の民主党と共和党の一部が、トップダウン形式のテックM&Aを弱体化させようとしていることは注目されているものの、その動きがスタートアップの評価額や資金調達に何をもたらすのかについてはほとんど注目されていないと思う。もしそうした指標が低下した場合には、大企業に対抗しようと働くスタートアップの数が減る可能性がある。
よく考えよう。
Exchangeは、再びUnity（ユニティ）CFOのKim Jabal（キム・ジャバル）氏に話を聞いた。それは単に好きなゲームや、嫌いなゲームについて冗談を言い合うためだけではなく、彼女が入社したときには非公開で今は公開された同社の財務責任者として、ジャバル氏がどのように考えているかを把握しておきたかったからだ。その中からいくつかご紹介しよう。
スタートアップといえば、私が注目していて最近増資をした会社の話をしよう。Deepgram（ディープグラム）という会社だ。私は、2020年3月に1200万ドル（約12億6000万円）を調達した同社のシリーズAを取材した。それが今回はTigerの主導でさらに2500万ドル（約26億3000万円）を調達しているので、これは大金がアーリーステージに投資されているおもしろい事例だと思う。ともあれ、Deepgramは音声認識の特定のモデルとその市場に賭けていたし、新しい投資は、その双方への賭けがうまくいっていることを意味している。
最近私はDatabricks（データブリックス）のCEOを話をした（最新のメガラウンドについてはこちら）、彼はAI、特にGAN（Generative adversarial networks、敵対的生成ネットワーク）NLPなどから得られた大きな利益について語った。私たちの読みは、AIやそれに類似したデータへのアプローチ方法がワークフローに浸透していくにつれて、さらにDeepgram的ラウンドが増えることが予想できるというものだ。
そして、フィンテック企業のPayoneer（ペイオニア）が上場されることになった。SPACを使ってだ。投資家向け説明会の内容はここから閲覧できる。Payoneerは、収益を上げないままSPACを経由して上場するわけではない。同社の2020の収益は3億4600万ドル（約364億6000万円）になると予想されている。ここで取り上げたのは2つの理由からだ。まず、スライドを読んでほしい。そして「なんでSPACのスライドはこうも読みにくいのだろう？」と自問してほしい。私には意味がわからない。そして次に、「なぜ彼らはこれまでのようなIPOを行わないのだろう？」と自問してほしい。数字は32ページと40ページに書かれている。私には理由がわからない。もし何かわかったら教えてほしい。もっとも良い答えを送ってくれた方には、イーロン・マスク氏お勧めのDogeコインを差し上げよう。
最後に。TechCrunchが注目アプリに関する新しいニュースレターを発行する。書くのはSarah Perez記者だ。申し込みはここから。無料だ。
何か新しい曲を聴きたいときには、こんな曲はいかがだろう。ではまた。
画像クレジット：Nigel Sussman
【原文】
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch , but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here.
Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors.
It’s been a bizarre few weeks, with Robinhood raising a torrent of new funds to keep its zero-cost trading model afloat during turbulent market conditions, other neo-trading houses changing up their business model and more. But amidst all the moves in startup-land, something has been itching in the back of my head: Why are several rich people pumping crappy assets?
It’s fine for a retail investor to share trading ideas amongst themselves; it has happened, will happen, and will always happen. But we’ve seen folks like Elon Musk and Chamath Palihapitiya use their broad market imprint to encourage regular folks — directly and indirectly — to buy into some pretty silly trades that could lose the retail crowd lots of money that they may not be able to afford.
Think of Elon coming back to Twitter to pump Doge, a joke of a cryptocurrency that is highly volatile and mostly useless. Or Chamath putting money into GameStop publicly, a move that he is better equipped than most to get into and out of. Which he did. And made money. Most folks that played the GameStop casino have not been as lucky, and many have lost more than they can afford.
Caveat emptor and all that, but I do not love folks with savvy and capital leading regular people into risky trades or into assets that are not backed by long-term fundamentals, but instead a small shot at near-term returns. Yoof.
Finally, keeping up the theme of general annoyance, Senator Hawley is back in the news this week with an attention-focused announcement of an idea to block big tech companies from buying smaller companies. As you would expect from the insurrection-friendly Senator, it’s not an incredibly serious proposal, and it’s written so vaguely as to be nearly humorous.
But as I wrote here on my personal blog about all of this, what does matter out of the generally irksome pol is that there is bipartisan interest in limiting the ability of big tech companies to buy smaller companies. For startups, that is not good news; M&A exits are critical liquidity events for startups, and big companies have the most money.
It’s no sauté of my onions if startup valuations fall, but I think there’s been plenty of attention noting that some Democrats and some Republicans in the U.S want to undercut top-down tech M&A, and not nearly enough notice concerning what the effort might do to startup valuations and funding. And if those metrics dip, there could be fewer upstarts in the market actually working to take on the giants.
Food for thought.
Market Notes
The Exchange caught up once again with Unity CFO Kim Jabal. We did so not merely to make jokes with her about games that we like or don’t like, but to keep tabs on how Jabal thinks as the financial head of a company that was private when she joined, and public now. A few observations:
And speaking of startups, let’s talk about a company that I’ve had my eye on that recently raised more capital: Deepgram. I covered the company’s Series A, a $12 million round in March 2020. Now it has raised $25 million more, led by Tiger, so this is a fun case of big money investing early-stage, I think. Regardless, Deepgram was a bet on a particular model for speech recognition, and, then, its market. its new investment implies that both wagers came out the right way up.
And I was chatting with the CEO of Databricks recently (more here on its latest megaround), who mentioned the huge gains made in AI, and more specifically around generative adversarial networks (GANs) NLP, and more. Our read is that we should expect to see more Deepgram-ish rounds in the future as AI and similar methods of approaching data make their way into workflows.
And fintech player Payoneer is going public. Via a SPAC. You can read the investor presentation here. Payoneer is not a pre-revenue firm going out via a blank check; it did an expected $346 million in 2020 rev. I’m bringing it to you for two reasons. One, read the deck, and then ask yourself why all SPAC decks are so ugly. I don’t get it. And then ask yourself why isn’t it pursuing a traditional IPO? Numbers are on pages 32 and 40. I can’t figure it out. Let me know if you have a take. Best response gets Elon’s dogecoin.
Various and Sundry
Wrapping up this week, TechCrunch has a new newsletter coming out on apps that is going to rule. Sarah Perez is writing it. You can sign up here, it’s free!
And if you need a new tune, you could do worse than this one. Have a great weekend!
Alex
（文：Alex Wilhelm、翻訳：sako）
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