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If you follow millennials on Twitter (and god help you), then you know that Anne Helen Petersen’s piece this past weekend “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation” struck a deep chord for many.

It’s longform and detailed, but Petersen’s primary thesis is that my generation has been dumped into one of the worst moments for economic and social mobility in recent memory (global financial crisis, etc.), which has led us to massively over-optimize our lives to try to extract any value we can. Baby boomers could work at a big company for thirty years at 40-50 hours a week with stable and increasing pay (with pensions!), while millennials have to simultaneously hold down four gigs and make their Instagrams and LinkedIns look great lest they fail to land their next gig, all while operating under the pressure of horrific levels of student loans.

Nod or shake your head, but I also think Petersen is getting at a much tougher challenge for society, one that I think will be one of the richest areas for investment in the coming years for founders and venture capitalists.

That thesis is around wellness and resilience, but not just of the health/physical variety. It also encompasses the reliability of our products, the level of income we receive each week, whether a storm might knock out our power, and how we read the news. Modern life is complicated and also chaotic, jumping from crisis to crisis we can barely understand. The question then becomes whether there are solutions that can absorb some of that complexity and chaos to simplify and satisfy our lives.

This week, rivers of glistening ink flowed over Lambda School, a Y Combinator alum that is using income share agreements to fund tuition at its schools. ISAs as a financial model are reasonably simple: if you go to a school, you agree to repay that school a fixed percentage of your income over a set period of time (let’s say purely for ease 10% of income for 10 years). Lambda School argues that this provides incentive alignment, because the school wants its graduates to be as successful as possible, while the Twitterati snarks that the startup has invented “taxes.”

First, fuck the snarkers who don’t spend any time learning about new, innovative models for offering services.

That aside, Lambda School is really offering a pathway to a more resilient life. If the economy collapses, student debt today still has to be paid on a fixed schedule, regardless of employment opportunities. Yet Lambda’s take ebbs and flows with the changes in the macroeconomy, offering to absorb the complexity and chaos around us. Want to take a year away from a high-paying job to work at a non-profit? You can, and Lambda adjusts without you even having to make a phone call.

This resilience tech isn’t limited to just education — it touches pretty much every facet of innovation. Just take a look at some startups I have profiled in the past year. Gremlin is using “chaos engineering” to reduce downtime and increase software reliability for web applications. Even is building out a savings model so that anyone can plan for financial independence. Wild Type is manufacturing salmon that can provide more sustainability to our environment and absorb climate change shocks.

There has been an enormous academic debate for more than two decades about the meaning of GDP, and whether there are alternative models worth exploring like Gross National Happiness. There are deep intricacies in that debate, but I would offer you this conclusion: we can wait for top-down permission to make a more resilient society, or we can create bottoms-up solutions that take some of the complexity and chaos out of modern life today. In a world of constant change and disruption, it’s the startups that increase stability that will reap rewards this decade.

TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new — provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like or hate something here.

What’s next & obsessions

After a bit of a hiatus from the holidays and avoiding CES, I am back. Arman and I are still exploring our obsessions from last year, including 5G deployments, China tech geopolitics, next-gen semiconductors, and GPS.

But the new direction we are going to spend some cycles on is this resiliency theme described above. How do we innovate for climate change? How do we handle the increasing complexity of modern life, whether it is educational/informational, financial, or health? What does water security mean, and how is the world going to adapt and innovate to ensure ten billion people have access to safe drinking water?

I love hearing from readers, so if you have thoughts, opinions, articles or books, share them with me: danny@techcrunch.com.

Stray Thoughts (aka, what I am reading)

• The Planet Remade – Oliver Morton takes an imaginative look at geoengineering and its potential to solve climate change. Recommended to me by futurist writer (and reader) Eliot Peper.I read the first two chapters last night, and I enjoyed Morton’s framework around innovation and climate change. He poses two key questions: 1) should we take serious action on climate change, and 2) do you believe that taking action is very hard? He posits that if you are in the “yes/yes” camp, then today’s solutions offer nothing that will slow let alone reverse the effects of climate change. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to start exploring alternatives — i.e. geoengineering. I found the framework and his explanations lucid and compelling, and I’m looking forward to sharing more notes in the coming days/weeks.

• The melting pot of JavaScript – I found this essay by well-known JavaScript engineer Dan Abramov quite compelling. He argues that the messiness of JS is a feature and not a bug, representing the flourishing of human creativity rather than a militarized top-down “BDFL” model that you see in other languages. That leads to complexity and “fatigue,” but also to much more rapid innovation. He has some suggestions on how to ameliorate that complexity’s worst effects, including improving default configurations to reduce cognitive load on engineers. Sounds like resiliency if you ask me.

• On a more personal front, I wrote a long list of my personal favorite reads and writes of 2018.

Reading docket

What I’m reading (or at least, trying to read)

• The Planet Remade by Oliver Morton and Networks of New York by Ingrid Burrington.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2TDzI6U

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Mastermind Jordan Peele is a very busy man these days, working on new projects including the movie Us, an upcoming Twilight Zone reboot, a Netflix stop-motion animated movie called Wendell and Wild, as well as two Amazon shows. But the Academy Award winner is also making time for YouTube.

The first trailer for Weird City, a sci-fi anthology series with an absolutely amazing cast, dropped today.

The series was created by Peele and Key and Peele writer Charlie Sanders, and follows the lives of various characters in the future city of Weird, where the middle class has disappeared and left only the rich (living ‘above the line’) and the poor (‘below the line’).

The Weird City cast includes Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ed O’Neill, Awkwafina, Laverne Cox, Steven Yuen, Dylan O’Brien and Gillian Jacobs.

The show drops February 13 on YouTube Premium.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2FjKzjd

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The London fintech industry is pretty close-knit, fall of strong personalities, and at times fiercely competitive. Within this context it is quite common for employees — and sometimes even founders — to swap sides. The latest such move sees André Mohamed, previously CTO and a co-founder of Freetrade, join rival Revolut as its new Head of Wealth & Trading Product.

Freetrade launched its ‘zero-fee’ trading app in October last year, four months after Revolut announced its intention to add commission-free trading to its banking app, in a bid to compete with Silicon Valley’s Robinhood. That feature has yet to see the light of day, although I’m told it is still on track to launch this quarter. That makes the hiring of Mohamed from Freetrade all the more noteworthy. He joined Revolut in November.

The circumstances that saw Mohamed depart Freetrade remain unclear. According to my sources his contract was terminated last year and the two parties settled, with Freetrade accepting no liability. Companies House records show that the former CTO resigned as a Director of Freetrade on 7th September 2018. According to one person familiar with Mohamed’s side of the story, the former CTO had a difference in philosophy to that of Freetrade co-founder and CEO Adam Dodds. Founder disputes are not uncommon, after all (and I should know!).

Freetrade declined to comment on the specific reasons for Mohamed’s departure, but did provide TechCrunch with the following statement:

“In the first half of last year, it became clear to us we were not shipping the Freetrade product fast enough. We decided to bring in new technical leadership. Ian Fuller joined us as our new VP Engineering in July. Coming from Snap, and Amazon before that, he arrived with deep experience in shipping and scaling mobile products to millions of users. Under his leadership, we’ve finally launched our app and have been working on a new investment platform, which we are excited about rolling out in the coming months”.

Meanwhile, Mohamed’s background suggests he is a good fit for Revolut’s soon-to-launch trading product, and not just based on inside experience as a co-founder of Freetrade (it’s curious that Mohamed doesn’t appear to have signed a non-compete clause). He has a Computer Science degree from UCL, coupled with 20 years industry experience where he has worked at a number of leading fintech startups, SMEs, tier 1 investment banks and capital markets technology consultancies. He is also a former colleague of Revolut co-founder and CTO Vlad Yatsenko, from their time at Lab49.

“It’s a company that you don’t come across very often, so I jumped at the opportunity,” says Mohamed in a statement. “Revolut has a huge customer base and global ambitions, at a completely different scale to any company I’ve worked at before. It’s extremely exciting to be part of a fast-growing scale-up that is growing rapidly and getting worldwide recognition. The products we are building are truly disruptive, and we can’t wait for the trading products to join the roster of other fantastic money-saving financial products on offer at Revolut”.

As Head of Wealth & Trading Product, Mohamed’s will be focused on delivering Revolut’s commission-free trading platform as well as a complementary robo-advisor offering.

If you have tips regarding London’s fintech scene, get in touch confidentially by emailing me at steveohear@techcrunch.com

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2H4DiWd

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If you thought the on-demand laundry space had run out of startup steam here’s a bit of a conditioner: Madrid-based startup, Mr Jeff, has bagged a $12M Series A, led by All Iron Ventures.

The 2016-founded firm currently offers home laundry and dry cleaning services, including on-demand and monthly subscription options, in seven countries, with a focus on LatAm. Last August it acquired Brazilian laundry franchise, Lava é Leva, to move into another market in the region.

The franchise model sets the approach apart from some other on-demand laundry startups that already folded. That and a focus on markets with lower rates of washing machine ownership. Ergo, they’re disrupting trips to the laundromat.

The company closed 2018 with more than 1,000 franchises operating, and more than 150 direct employees plus 2,400+ indirect employees working to turn the customer’s in-app tap into clean and ironed clothes returned to them within 48 hours.

Flush with new funding, Mr Jeff says it’s aiming to have franchises operating in 30 countries by the end of 2019, looking east to Asia. It also plans to consolidate its LatAm position by expanding its operations in Panama, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Prior to the Series A, it had raised around $3.5M in seed funding, including from European entrepreneurs such as Albert Armengol (CEO of Doctoralia), Jeroen Merchiers (Managing Director of Airbnb Europe, Middle East and Africa), and Kim Jung ( CEO NX Corp).

It adds that a majority of its earlier investors have opted to continue to support the company by participating in the Series A.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2REaFDr

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If you thought the on-demand laundry space had run out of startup steam here’s a bit of a conditioner: Madrid-based startup, Mr Jeff, has bagged a $12M Series A, led by All Iron Ventures.

The 2016-founded firm currently offers home laundry and dry cleaning services, including on-demand and monthly subscription options, in seven countries, with a focus on LatAm. Last August it acquired Brazilian laundry franchise, Lava é Leva, to move into another market in the region.

The franchise model sets the approach apart from some other on-demand laundry startups that already folded. That and a focus on markets with lower rates of washing machine ownership. Ergo, they’re disrupting trips to the laundromat.

The company closed 2018 with more than 1,000 franchises operating, and more than 150 direct employees plus 2,400+ indirect employees working to turn the customer’s in-app tap into clean and ironed clothes returned to them within 48 hours.

Flush with new funding, Mr Jeff says it’s aiming to have franchises operating in 30 countries by the end of 2019, looking east to Asia. It also plans to consolidate its LatAm position by expanding its operations in Panama, Costa Rica and Uruguay.

Prior to the Series A, it had raised around $3.5M in seed funding, including from European entrepreneurs such as Albert Armengol (CEO of Doctoralia), Jeroen Merchiers (Managing Director of Airbnb Europe, Middle East and Africa), and Kim Jung ( CEO NX Corp).

It adds that a majority of its earlier investors have opted to continue to support the company by participating in the Series A.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2REaFDr

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Should you let AI help you pick your roommates? Barcelona-based urban room rental startup Badi thinks so, and it’s just closed a $30M Series B funding round less than a year after a $10M Series A — suggesting algorithm-aided matchmaking is resonating with its target Millennial(ish) ‘Generation Rent’ demographic, as they hunt for their next flatmate.

The 2015 founded startup has now raised circa $45M in total, while its platform has passed 12M rental requests. Badi also tells us it passed one million registered users last November, up from around 700,000 in February 2018.

It currently offers a service in key cities in four European markets: Spain, France, Italy and the U.K.

The business was set up to respond to the rising trend of urban living (and indeed tourism) that’s been driving rents and squeezing more people into shared houses to try to make city living affordable.

Badi CEO and founder Carlos Pierre points to estimates that by 2050 the total population living in cities will increase from 54% to 66%. “There will likely be a shortage of homes for people looking to live in cities and as a result, this will lead to an increase in smaller living units or rooms. This is where Badi comes in,” he suggests in a statement.

On the AI front, Badi applies machine learning technology to help with the flatmate matching process — learning from users of its platform, as they match and agree to become flatmates, and then feeding ‘compatibility insights’ back in to keep improving its recommendations.

The Series B is led by U.S.-based consumer tech VC firm Goodwater Capital, making its first investment in a Spanish startup. Also investing Target Global and existing VCs Spark Capital and Mangrove Capital.

Badi says the funding will be put towards consolidating its services in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Paris and Rome, and also to open new offices in London.

It says it’s spying a big opportunity there (despite Brexit) on account of the UK capital being one of the most most expensive for renters in the region.

Two other cities it operates in, Barcelona and Madrid, are similarly in demand with renters (and tourists), with Badi noting the rental market in Spain has grown by 130% in the last 10 years and represents 23% of the entire real estate industry.

While Paris and Rome are also major tourist destinations, and short term tourist rentals have been widely linked to increased rents for locals.

Badi’s business is positioned to benefit from the tourist-inflated rent trend as it stands, though cities like Barcelona are also looking at what they can do, policy wise, to curb rising rents and ensure there is affordable and adequate living space for local families, such as via social housing quotas on developers and even buying vacant buildings themselves to convert to housing stock.

But despite increased political attention on the problem of a lack of affordable housing in cities in desirable urban hotspots it’s highly unlikely that housing pressures are going to let up any time soon.

Badi says the Series B will also be used to expand the size of its team, up to 100%, and also to develop additional extra services intended to make life easier for landlords and tenants.

“In the first quarter of 2019, we will work on improving our product to offer possibilities for professionals and private owners to make their experience on Badi far more efficient. Secondly we are redesigning and launching a new booking system around April 2019 to enhance the booking experience to make it more streamlined and user-centric,” it tells us.

Commenting on the funding in a statement, Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder of Goodwater Capita, added: “We are extremely excited to partner with Badi in their mission to solve the looming urban housing crisis — there simply aren’t enough homes in cities and housing has become too expensive. Badi provides a unique end-to-end rental platform that builds trust and convenience directly into the customer experience, which has enabled them to unlock thousands of new rooms in cities around the world.”

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2H5hFoS

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TransferWise, the London-headquartered international money transfer company, is applying for a new licence in Brussels, in a bid to navigate a possible “no deal” Brexit as the U.K. prepares to leave membership of the European Union on March 29 this year.

One of the definite plusses of EU membership, and something that has undoubtedly benefited U.K. fintech startups, is so-called “passporting” of financial services. This sees a certain level of financial regulatory harmony across the EU and means that companies authorised in any EU (or EEA) state can offer their services freely in any other, and with minimal additional authorisation.

Furthermore, these “passports” are the foundation of the EU single market for financial services. Therefore, if the U.K. leaves the single market, which a no deal Brexit and other likely forms of Brexit will result in, then fintech companies in the U.K. that trade in the EU/EEA or have plans to do so, will need to obtain new licenses from an EU/EAA country.

In TransferWise’s case, the plan is to open a small, additional satellite office in Brussels, with the company applying to the Belgium regulator, The National Bank of Belgium, for a “Payment Institutions Licence”.

And, in a sense, this isn’t such a big deal for a large company like TransferWise: the money transfer service already has 9 offices, employs 1,400 people globally, with 230 posted to its HQ in London.

However, for much smaller startups, the loss of passporting could be prohibitively expensive to mitigate, depending on what stage of growth a company is at and how much runway it still has left. For new companies, it makes setting up shop in London’s fintech much less attractive, as regulatory authorisation will need to be duplicated for EU trading.

Meanwhile, it’s notable that TransferWise has chosen to apply to be regulated in Belgium, and not somewhere like Ireland (as, for example Starling Bank has done), or Lithuania (as Revolut has done). It could be argued that both are easier options. Lithuania especially touts itself as the fintech regulator with the lowest barriers and lightest touch.

Cue quote from TransferWise co-founder and CEO Kristo Käärmann: “Brussels is at the heart of all EU affairs, so establishing an office in the city makes great sense for us. The National Bank of Belgium impressed us with its understanding of the payments sector and openness to innovation, while at the same time being a strong and trusted regulator. We’re keen to build a similarly productive relationship with the NBB to the one we already have with the UK’s FCA”.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2Fjadoi

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Fintech startup N26 is raising a Series D round of $300 million. Following this new funding round, the company is now valued at $2.7 billion. Insight Venture Partners is leading the round with Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC and a few existing investors also participating.

N26 is building a retail bank from scratch. The company lets you open a bank account and get a card in just a few minutes. You can then control everything from your phone or computer. And it’s a much better user experience compared to traditional banks.

This round comes as a surprise as the startup announced a $160 million funding round ten months ago. I talked with N26 co-founder and CEO Valentin Stalf about this, and there are several reasons why raising money made sense.

First, N26 is a very different company now compared to early 2018. The user base has tripled and people are using their N26 accounts more and more. Around a third of N26’s customers are paying every month for a premium account.

The startup’s valuation has exploded as well. “The previous valuation was below $1 billion,” Stalf told me. In other words, N26 is in great shape and it made sense to grab more money before expanding to new markets around the world.

N26 is currently live in 24 European markets and has 2.3 million customers. The company plans to expand to the U.S. in the coming months as well as other markets around the world. Customers currently hold €1 billion in N26 accounts overall. And the company has processed €20 billion in transaction volume since its creation.

I interviewed Valentin Stalf about today’s funding round. This interview has been slightly edited for brevity and clarity.

TechCrunch: Your list of investors is becoming more and more global. Does it mean that, in addition to the U.S., we can expect other countries and other regions as well?

Valentin Stalf: Absolutely. Our goal now for the next couple of years is to transform N26 from being a European company to being a global company. We started in Germany and Austria as you know. We’re now in 24 markets including the U.K. where we’re offering our product in a different currency.

And now the next step will be the U.S. in 2019. We would like to bring N26 to four to six new markets outside of the U.S. and Europe in the next couple of years. But this year is really about the U.S. and then by the end of the year one more market or a couple of markets probably. But we see the opportunity to take the business global. And that’s also what everybody who invested in this round signed up for.

TC: It’s the first time you’re sharing the valuation, which is quite high. Does it mean that the financials of the company are looking good? Are you making money and from what?

Stalf: Two things led to the success of this funding round. One is tremendous growth. We’ve more than tripled the number of customers in the last year. Globally, I think we’re the fastest growing mobile bank on the market now. It’s one driver of the valuation — the future potential that there are many more customers searching for a banking alternative.

We’ve also worked on the profitability of our company. We’re definitely today the most advanced player on the market in terms of profitability per customer. Obviously, we’ll be consuming cash in 2019 — that’s why we raised a round to invest in new markets. But if you look at our company on a per-customer basis, we’re profitable on a per-customer basis. And I think it’s very important.

Where is the revenue coming from today? We’re very much focused on the daily usage of our product. So one is really from card transactions and the interchange fee. Second is our subscription model. Depending on the market, up to 32 to 35 percent are choosing one of the premium products that we’re offering — it’s a really important revenue driver. And then you have the daily usage of financial products, such as overdraft, savings and consumer credit and these things that we have on the German market, the French market. We’re bringing that now to the U.K. and other markets.

TC: On the product front, are there other products that you’re going to roll out or are you more focused on launching the entire lineup of products across all your markets?

Stalf: I think we want to internationalize existing products to new markets and bring our financial products that we have to more of the markets that we’re in.

But I think the strong focus that we have in order to internationalize is really to innovate more on the product. We’ve launched Spaces before Christmas — I would say version one. The big update that is coming out in the next two months is really about sharing a space, creating a shared account either long term with your partner or short term with friends.

We’ll add much more functionality to Spaces. We’ll be adding virtual cards that you can add per account. We’ll be adding different account numbers.

TC: Let’s go back to the funding round. You’ve raised $160 million a year ago — it’s quite quick. If I read that correctly, does it mean that you’re thinking that competition is fierce or that you should get a war chest in case there’s an economic downturn?

Stalf: I wouldn’t call it an economic downturn, but if you look at the equity market, obviously valuations have been challenged over the last couple of weeks. And I think we were lucky in terms of when we raised funding. I think it was good timing.

Independent of that, we’ve never raised because of any timing thing or so. Our company managed to do incredibly well in the last year in terms of profitability and growth. And we’ve had a lot of people approaching us, we’re always in contact with different investors. I always think the best time to raise is when you don’t need to raise. GIC and Insight are the best investors we could have thought of.

TC: Let’s talk about the future. Now, that you’ve got a ton of funding in your bank account. How do you see N26 in a couple of years as a product, as a company and as a brand?

Stalf: I think we have the opportunity to really build a business with a hundred million customers globally. I truly believe in this. And that means that we’ll have to build the brand that you need for such as business. It’s going to be a big focus.

If you look more at our company, we have now 700 employees in three locations around the world — Berlin, Barcelona and New York. We will open a couple of offices throughout the next year in Europe and maybe somewhere else in the world. So it's really awesome to transform our company to be more global — we already have 50 different nationalities.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2QxFswZ

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French startup Ledger unveiled a new hardware wallet at CES this week. While the device isn’t going to ship until March, the company let me play with a prototype version of the device. The Ledger Nano X feels just like using the Nano S, but on mobile.

When the company’s previous hardware wallet first came out, that was before the cryptocurrency boom, before Ledger raised $75 million. And the user experience wasn’t great.

You had to install multiple Chrome apps to manage multiple cryptocurrencies, switch between each app when you wanted to access your balance and manage your crypto assets. But things got much better when the company released Ledger Live on macOS, Windows and Linux.

With this new app, you could finally view your portfolio balance and manage multiple crypto assets from the same desktop app. The logical next step was mobile. And you have to get a new hardware wallet for that.

The Ledger Nano X looks more or less like the Ledger Nano S, but slightly bigger. It’s shaped like a USB key and it has a tiny screen to confirm transactions on the device. There’s a tiny 100 mAh battery in it and a slightly bigger screen. The microUSB port has been replaced by a USB-C port. The buttons are now on each side of the screen instead of on the side of the device.

After you pair the device with your phone, you can control everything from your iOS or Android phone. You can install apps on the Ledger Nano X, access your wallets and send cryptocurrencies. On iOS, you can lock the app using a password and optionally Face ID or Touch ID.

When you need to validate a transaction on your Ledger Nano X, your phone will pair with your Ledger device over Bluetooth. You can then view transaction information on your Ledger device and approve the transaction on the device itself.

What makes Ledger so secure is that your private keys never leave your Ledger device. Transactions are signed directly on the device. Your private keys are never sent over Bluetooth and your cryptocurrencies remain safe even if your smartphone is compromised.

Ledger now uses an ST33 secure element, which is slightly more secure than the previous version ST31. Now, there’s only a single chip and it is connected directly to the screen and buttons, which reduces the risk of having someone compromise the information on your screen.

The screen is now twice as tall, which lets you view full public addresses without a scrolling view. You can now install up to 100 different cryptocurrency apps. You can still plug the device to a computer and use the desktop app as well. And the device costs €120 ($138).

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2ADv0Pk

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The government shutdown has entered into day 19, making it the second-longest shutdown in U.S. history. With President Donald Trump slamming his hands down on a table and storming out of negotiations with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer earlier today, a fast-approaching end feels unlikely.

Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are out of work as U.S. leaders struggle to reach a fair agreement on the federal budget, including employees of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . The government agency, responsible for protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly and efficient markets, shut down on December 27 and has just 285 of its 4,436 employees on the clock.

“Due to the ongoing federal government shutdown, the SEC is currently operating in accordance with the agency’s plan for operating during a shutdown,” the agency wrote on its website. “The SEC has staff available to respond to emergency situations involving market integrity and investor protection, including law enforcement.”

EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system that allows companies to electronically file crucial documents, including paperwork for initial public offerings, has remained up and running. That’s led to a “large and growing” backlog of filings, reports CNBC, that could cause a delay in several IPOs, as well as a lasting impact on the state of the IPO market in 2019.

Several major technology companies have taken steps toward early-2019 IPOs, all of which are at risk of a delay. A poor performing stock market is only adding fuel to the flames in a year that many had expected would bring record amounts of liquidity to investors via high-profile offerings. Uber, Lyft, Slack and Pinterest have all begun IPO prep, for example, with Uber chief executive officer Dara Khosrowshahi recently claiming turbulent public markets would not delay the ride-hailing company’s float.

“The good news is that we’ve got a strong balance sheet so we don’t need to go public this year,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s a desire [but] if it doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen. I’d be disappointed and I think our shareholders would be disappointed but the company would be just fine.”

He didn’t comment on the potential resonating effects of a government shutdown, per The WSJ. Uber and its largest U.S. competitor Lyft both filed confidentially with the SEC in December, just weeks before the shutdown began. During the shutdown, companies are still permitted to file confidentially, a method preferred by many companies as it allows them to refrain from disclosing key IPO details and financials to the public ahead of an exit.

Ultimately, tech’s most buzz-worthy unicorns will be the least affected by Trump and co.’s discordance. Well-funded businesses with strong balance sheets, as Khosrowshahi pointed out, have a safety net ready if IPO plans go awry. Smaller businesses, particularly those in need of an infusion of capital to continue operating, will bear the brunt of any IPO delays.

from Startups – TechCrunch https://tcrn.ch/2VDTfG8