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  3. In recent weeks, Ben Silbermann, a co-founder of the digital pinboard service Pinterest, resigned as chief executive; Joe Gebbia

In recent weeks, Ben Silbermann, a co-founder of the digital pinboard service Pinterest, resigned as chief executive; Joe Gebbia

admin2022-12-09  116
问题     In recent weeks, Ben Silbermann, a co-founder of the digital pinboard service Pinterest, resigned as chief executive; Joe Gebbia, a co-founder of the home rental company Airbnb, announced his departure from the company’s leadership; and Apoorva Mehta, the founder of the grocery delivery app Instacart, said he would end his run as executive chairman when the company went public, as soon as this year.
    The resignations signify the end of an era at these companies, which are among the most valuable and well-known to emerge from Silicon Valley in the past decade, and of the era they represent. In recent years, investors have dumped increasingly large sums of money into a group of highly valued start-ups known as unicorns, worth $1 billion or more, and their founders have been treated as visionary heroes. Those founders fought for special ownership rights that kept them in control of their companies—a change from the past, when entrepreneurs were often replaced by more experienced executives or pressured to sell.
    But when the stock market fell dramatically this year, hitting money-losing tech companies especially hard, this approach began to change. Venture capitalists pulled back on their deal-making and urged Silicon Valley’s prized young companies to cut costs and proceed cautiously. The industry began to talk of "wartime C.E.O.s" who can do more with less, while bragging about lessons learned from previous downturns.
    Patience for visionaries wore thin. Founder-led companies started to seem like liabilities, not assets. "All of that changed in the last 90 days, and it’s not coming back anytime soon," said Wil Schroter, the founder of Startups.com, an accelerator program for young companies. The "we’ll figure it out later" story is no longer attractive to investors, he added.
    They’re not leaving on a high note. Shares of Pinterest are down 60 percent from a year ago. Elliott Management, an activist shareholder known for pressuring companies to make big changes, recently took a stake in the company. Airbnb shares are down 25 percent from a year ago. And Instacart lowered its internal valuation almost 40 percent in March, as it prepares to go public in a hostile market.
    "It’s surely less fun being a C.E.O. when markets are down, the economy is trending negative and regulation is increasing," said Kevin Werbach, a professor of business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. "If you’re as already rich, famous and successful as these guys, there usually comes a point where staying in the saddle is less appealing than riding off into the sunset."
The underlined sentence (Para. 3) most probably shows that________.
选项 A、the stock market is suffering from economic downturn
B、young companies have lost their technological edge
C、venture capitalists begin to revise policy on start-ups
D、wartime C.E.O.s are introduced to settle disputes
答案C
解析 语义题。根据题干可定位至第三段。this approach began to change这一句前面有逻辑转折词but，提示答案来自被考查句的下一句：Venture capitalists pulled back on their deal-making and urged Silicon Valley’s prized young companies to cut costs and proceed cautiously (风险投资家撤离交易，并敦促硅谷那些高估值的初创企业降低成本、谨慎行事)。因此可推知，风险资本家开始改变对初创企业的政策，C项属于同义改写，故正确。选项A对应第一句But when the stock market fell dramatically this year(但随着今年股市大幅下跌)，选项内容本身正确，但并非画线句所表明的内容，该项属于答非所问，故排除。B项属于主观臆断，科技公司受到打击，而不是公司失去了技术优势，故排除该项。D项与最后一句The industry began to talk of "wartime C.E.O.s" who can do more with less, while bragging about lessons learned from previous downturns (这个行业开始谈论“战时首席执行官”：他们用更少的钱做更多的事，同时大肆宣扬从以往的衰退中吸取的教训)不符，该项属于主观臆断，故排除。故本题答案为C项。
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