A VC cataclysm has begun. Early 2024 will be rough. But it won't change anything.

• As 2023 winds down, a reckoning in the VC industry is underway.
• With startup failures and VC-firm layoffs, it's not likely to improve in early 2024.
• Here's how the industry set itself up for this predictable outcome. 

I was on a Zoom call with a staffer for the venture capital arm of a big tech company. She's a person I've known for years.

We were chatting about life when she stopped talking, looked at her phone and said in a clipped voice, "I'll have to call you back. We just had layoffs."

Her job was safe, I later learned. But it was clear that the VC world has entered into rarified territory: people are getting fired, not because of performance, but because their industry is in a cataclysmic downward spiral.