[gsibble]

A lot of this is because VCs are in bed with the media, especially tech news sites. They've been publicly and loudly unhappy with the prices of rounds for several years now. They raised an enormous amount of capital over the last few years that they are expected to deploy as soon as possible. This is all coordinated with a drop in public markets and, yes, somewhat of a tech bubble, to force valuations down and make them more palatable for VCs.

Source: Former SV startup CEO currently helping with a raise at an AI company. We aren't getting pushback on anything except our valuation which they constantly use the news of the day to try to lower.

It's not like VCs don't have capital on hand and it's not like they will all have big paydays if they don't invest it. They just want better returns and have for a while.

[blululu]

I think the VC who runs this site wrote an essay about this tactic a while ago: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html