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

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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."
Wil Schroter is quoted to indicate that________.

选项 A、the age of visionaries is coming to an end
B、founder-led companies are starting to prosper
C、investors expect startups to figure things out
D、liquid assets can be attractive to investors

答案A

解析 例证题。根据题于中的Wil Schroter可定位至第四段。引言通常是为了说明主旨,想要说明的主旨通常位于上文。A项对应第一句Patience for visionaries wore thin(人们对远见卓识者的耐心已经消磨殆尽),该项属于合理推断,故正确。B项与第二句Founder-led companies started to seem like liabilities,not assets(创始人领导的公司开始看起来负债累累,而不是资产充盈)相悖,该项属于是非混淆,故排除。C项与最后一句The "we’ll figure it out later" story is no longer attractive to investors (“我们以后会想办法”的说辞对投资者不再有吸引力)不符,该项属于过度推理,故排除。D项与第二句和最后一句不符,原文只在第二句中提到“创始人领导的公司并非资产充盈”,而未提及流动资产,该项属于无中生有,故排除。故本题答案为A项。
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