In good times, Silicon Valley is the kind of place we all fantasize about: Shiny new buildings full of genius techies rollerblading down the halls, eating free gourmet food and growing richer with each financing round.

But in bad times it resembles that Florida housing subdivision in The Big Short, where the buildings remain but most of the people have been forcibly relocated.

Which brings us to the sudden unicorn die-off. These are the fabled tech start-ups that — often before generating any sales or profits — achieve valuations of $1 billion or more. That there were dozens of them in 2015 seemed, well, idiotic. And now they’re looking like dot-coms circa 2000 — which is to say moribund. Here’s an excerpt from a much longer Wall Street Journal piece chronicling the process:

A year ago, startups with nascent business models were scoring billion-dollar valuations as investors raced each…