[code4tee]

The only people that don't see a bubble at the moment are the people inside the bubbles.

If your business has real revenue and real profit then there isn't much to worry about. If your business is valued on "hype" and theoretical valuations then you have reason to worry.

[nilkn]

I'm so glad I work at a company right now that has never taken funding and is legitimately profitable. Hiring and expansion have been hard when you don't have access to far more cash than you could ever generate yourself, but it's hard to put a number on knowing that you won't be affected much by an industry downturn (doubly so since none of our customers are software companies).

[icelancer]

Yup. The only debt we have is a rotating LOC for physical inventory (we ship hard goods) of which we have 2x in cash on hand, but obviously debt service of inventory is more efficient than cash service of inventory.

I read HN and other sites and I am just in shock of the fact people are creating... basically nothing sustainable and hoping it will somehow magically become sustainable? It boggles the mind.

[jacquesm]

In fact everybody else's downturn will be your opportunity.

[Tossrock]

Even if a business has real revenue and real profit, there is still danger depending on the source of that revenue and profit. If there's a large downturn in the startup world, b2b/SaaS companies which profit from startups will suffer too. What will the effect to github/pagerduty be if 3/4ths of startups vaporize? "Not good", I would wager.

Ultimately, it's about the source of the money. SaaS companies are higher up the "trophic chain" than than the startups that pay for their service, but VC money can still represent a substantial portion of their revenue, just passed through an intermediate company first.