@tmcw Those two things are definately related! There was a lack of oxygen to create a sustainable startup because you were competing with VC-funded, growth-over-all behemoths. To compete with them you had to be laser focused on profits and have no waste. And now, with higher rates, those growth-over-all companies have to become suddenly profit focused. So a lot gets cut.
Also, Google's incentives are fundamentally broken because, "sufficiently profitable" means, "could be comparable to AdSense"