Silicon Valley recalibrates after a year of reckoning

The era of cheap money ended, and the companies built on it had to learn a new language: efficiency, discipline, profit. The recalibration has been painful for those who lost work, and clarifying for those who remained.

What emerged is a more serious industry, or at least one that takes itself more seriously. The exuberance of growth-at-all-costs has given way to questions about what technology is actually for, and who it serves.

A new generation of founders is building with different assumptions: smaller teams, clearer business models, and a scepticism toward the scale that once defined success. Whether that produces better companies or merely smaller ones is an open question.

The Valley has always been a story of reinvention. This chapter, less glamorous than the last, may prove the more important one.