
Millennials and Gen Z are locked out of homeownership in most major cities. The causes are structural, and the political solutions being proposed will not fix them.

VC funding is down 60 percent from the 2021 peak. The startups that survived are stronger. The ones that did not left a trail of burned cash and broken promises.
The venture capital market has undergone its most dramatic correction since the dot-com bust. Total funding in 2025 was 60 percent below the 2021 peak. Valuations have returned to earth. And the free money era that created a generation of unprofitable unicorns is definitively over.
The correction was necessary. The 2020-2021 bubble produced companies valued at billions of dollars with no path to profitability, no competitive moats, and business models that only worked when capital was free. Many of those companies have since shut down or been acquired for pennies on the dollar.
The survivors are leaner and more focused. The startups raising money today have real revenue, real unit economics, and real customers. The bar for funding has returned to something resembling rationality.
But the correction has also had costs. Thousands of tech workers lost jobs. Promising early-stage companies that might have succeeded with more runway were killed by the funding drought. And the concentration of capital in AI has starved other sectors of investment.
The VC market will recover. It always does. But the next cycle will look different from the last one. The days of raising $100 million on a pitch deck and a dream are not coming back.

Millennials and Gen Z are locked out of homeownership in most major cities. The causes are structural, and the political solutions being proposed will not fix them.