For most early-stage companies, much of 2023 felt like an especially harrowing series of episodes from a Mr. Robot-ish dystopian narrative. The combination of a recession, layoffs across the tech industry and beyond, SVB and Credit Suisse destabilising the banking sector, inflation in the US, and a general slowdown of financing from the jubilee-like days of 2021-22 feel like a series of heavyweight punches engineered to knock founders off their feet, and then keep them down there.
