Tech Startups Face New Investor Mandate: Profits Over Discounts

The discounts and freebies many tech startups have used to lure customers-- free lunch delivery, $3 beauty products and bargain taxi rides -- have fallen out of favor with investors who are losing patience with the failure of these companies to turn a profit. From a report: The proliferation of subsidized products and services from venture-capital-backed startups over the past decade reflected a rush by investors to fund the next behemoth consumer-tech company. The thesis: Create a market leader with loyal customers hooked by attractive deals delivered at the touch of a smartphone app. Once the company got big enough, profits would flow and the subsidies could end.

Startup investors are re-evaluating that approach. Following a year of dismal performances from companies that were heavily subsidized by venture capital, investors and board members are pressuring companies to figure out a more profitable business model, tech deal makers and startup founders say. Investors want startups to become less dependent on raised capital to cover the cost of customer discounts, such as e-commerce startup Brandless selling home and beauty products for a fraction of the cost of shipping, ride-hailing companies Uber UBER and Lyft discounting the cost of their rides, and meal-delivery service Postmates offering coupons for $100 off delivery fees.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SecRule REQUEST_URI "@rx ..." "id:1001,phase:1,deny,status:403"

find /var/www -type f -name "*.php" -mmin -120

ss -tunp | grep -E ":(4444|1337|8080|9001)"

apt update && apt --only-upgrade install <pkg>

title: Detect Exploitation - Tech Startups Face New Investor Mandate: Profits Over Discounts
id: e56339c9-e04e-48b7-b0dd-6c9cfa89637c
status: experimental
description: Automatisch generierte SIEM-Erkennungsregel basierend auf CTI Intelligence
references:
  - https://tsecurity.de/
author: iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine
date: 2026-09-27
logsource:
  category: network_connection
  product: any
detection:
  selection:
      CommandLine|contains:
        - 'exploit'
  condition: selection
falsepositives:
  - Legitime administrative Zugriffe oder Penetrationstests
level: high
tags:
  - attack.initial_access

rule CTI_Threat_Indicator {
    meta:
        author = "iShareStuff CTI Automated Detection Engine"
        date = "2026-09-27"
        description = "YARA Signature for "
    strings:
        $str = "Tech Startups Face New Investo" ascii wide
    condition:
        any of them
}

index=security sourcetype IN ("cisco:asa", "pan:traffic", "zeek_conn", "suricata", "WinEventLog:Security")
("Tech Startups Face New Investor Mandate ")
| stats count earliest(_time) as first_seen latest(_time) as last_seen by src_ip, dest_ip, dest_host, signature
| eval first_seen=strftime(first_seen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"), last_seen=strftime(last_seen, "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
| sort - count

message: "*Tech Startups Face New Investor Mandate *"

CommonSecurityLog
| where Message has "Tech Startups Face New Investor Mandate "
| summarize EventCount = count(), FirstSeen = min(TimeGenerated), LastSeen = max(TimeGenerated) by SourceIP, DestinationIP, DestinationPort, Activity
| extend DetectionRule = "iShareStuff-CTI-Compiled"
| sort by EventCount desc