Mass tech layoffs spawn new wave of startups
Earlystage VC funding at around record levels
Echoes of dotcom crash that fueled Facebook, others

Jan 3 Reuters Nic Szerman lost his job at Meta Platforms in November, just two months after joining fulltime, falling victim to a sweeping 13 reduction of its workforce as the advertising market cratered.

Days later he was back working, seeking investment for his own company Nulink, a blockchainbased payment company, and sent pitches to startup accelerator Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitzs cryptocurrency fund.

As counterintuitive as it may sound, this layoff left me in a really good position, the 24yearold said. Because I don39;t have to pay back the signon bonus, I get four months of pay, and now I have time to focus on my own project.

Szerman is part of a wave of wouldbe entrepreneurs who are emerging from the ashes of the mass job losses seen in Silicon Valley in the second half of 2022, according to venture capitalists.

U.S. tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, Twitter and Snap have purged more than 150,000 staff, according to Layoff.fyi, which tracks technology job losses.

While overall venture capital VC financing fell 33 globally to about 483 billion in 2022, earlystage funding was robust, with 37.4 billion raised in socalled angel or seed rounds, in line with the record level seen in 2021, according to data from research firm PitchBook.

Day One Ventures, an early stage venture fund in San Francisco,…