Founder worries increase as investors pump the brakes

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

So far, 2020 has proven to be a year of surprises and disappointments. Over the past month, we’ve seen companies like

Toast

go from raising huge new rounds

this year at heightened valuations to layoffs

in mere months. TripActions

is another example

. Indeed, BounceX went from a rebrand and an announcement that it had reached $100 million ARR

earlier this year to layoffs as well

.

TechCrunch has been

talking to VCs, founders and all sorts

of folks to figure out what they are seeing in the market

as we race to learn more about venture and startups in the COVID-19 era. To further that goal, this morning we’re going to run a survey of surveys, looking at sentiment and performance data collected by valuation shop Preferred Return

, NFX, a venture firm

, and 500 Startups

, a startup accelerator and investing group.

As a bit of a spoiler, there aren’t too many smiles ahead.

But march forward we must

.

Rewinding the clock