Charting Form Ds to roughly see the state of venture capital “fund” raising

I think everyone knew, even without looking at any data, that startups were in a bubble thanks to Covid, when every "shoeshine boy" was studying to be a webdev at a start-up.

Like how many food delivery apps that are actually profitable can the economy handle?

I think the real real giveaway is that like 90% there's a big exit, it's an aquihire and the "product" is quickly dumped.

Yep. Many / most aquihires are pretty ugly financially. While the headline sounds impressive (“X startup acquired for $250M”) the reality is that with preferred cap tables and terms most folks see nothing and investors are merely trying to recoup some losses or make a modest (less than S&P500 index fund return) return on investment. It’s basically a fire sale to salvage what’s left from the wreckage.

Founders might get a little something and most shareholder employees get nothing.

Don’t they usually get a better stock package than the average new hire?

The problem is usually not "there are 300 food delivery services" but "there are three food delivery services and they control the market".

It's restaurants that don't want to deal with 300 apps. They will pick the top 3 and call it a day.

It's a business model problem; The "Uber" business model relies on a monopoly.

The business model is 1) "Have artificially low prices to push all competing business into bankrupty", 2) "Now that we're a monopoly, raise prices massively", 3) Massive profit, so long as no government starts doing anything about the fact that both steps #1 and #2 are illegal.

That business model fails the moment you have multiple startups dumping the market, none can move to step #2 because they'd bleed all their users to whichever competitor is still in step #1.

In my experience what the founders usually get is a bigger locked up retention package. The investors want the cash, and the acquirer wants the founders to stay.

The employees along for the ride on an acquihire? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Depends a lot on how generous the founder/target of the acquihire is.

.. and that's also a problem.