Startups spring from ashes of Big Tech purge

FILE PHOTO: A Google employee rides a shared Google bike past building BV100, during a tour of Google's new Bay View Campus in Mountain View, California, U.S. May 16, 2022. Picture taken May 16, 2022. REUTERS/Peter DaSilva

(Reuters) - Nic Szerman lost his job at Meta Platforms in November, just two months after joining full-time, falling victim to a sweeping 13% reduction of its workforce as the advertising market cratered.

Days later he was back working, seeking investment for his own company Nulink, a blockchain-based payment company, and sent pitches to startup accelerator Y Combinator and Andreessen Horowitz’s cryptocurrency fund.