My first recession | gadi.fm

Sure, everyone says we need to adapt, and while true, I think the phenomenon in itself – going through a recession for the first time – is a key paradigm shift for all of us first-timers. I’ll try capturing some of it here through my personal experience.

I was a one-year-old when the Dotcom bubble burst, and I was 9 when the Great Recession started. To be honest, I don’t remember much about those times. I was just a kid wanting the latest Hot Wheels of that time, happily enjoying my innocence and being sad when my parents couldn’t afford it. But I do remember the stories. I remember my parents struggling, mad about some bankers that suddenly disappeared with everyone’s money, and others losing everything. A decade later, I moved to San Francisco, a city known for its creative, ambitious people. It shaped almost everything about me, especially my perspective on startups.

What I didn’t know was that 2018-2022 San Francisco was pretty unprecedented, a time of infinite abundance. And being early in my career, I wasn’t thinking about why there was such abundance; I just focused on trying to run faster, leveraging what I could. Maybe I’d read here and there that zero interest rates lead to assets like technology being overvalued. But no one seemed to care, so why would I?

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