I never really got Allbirds. I mean, it had amazing marketing, I’ll give it that, but at its core it was selling a fairly mediocre product dressed up in the sort of moral virtue that lets well-heeled people with plenty of disposable income feel a bit better about themselves. There was a certain sex appeal in that, the idea that your footwear choices could double as an environmental statement. But if I’m being blunt, it always felt a bit like lipstick on a pig. And yet, when it went public, the narrative somehow stretched far enough to paint it as something closer to a tech company than a shoe brand.
Fast forward a few years, and that same company managed to burn through a very large pile of money. Not metaphorically large, but actually, countably large. Hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder funds went up in smoke as the business struggled to translate its feel-good narrative into something resembling sustainable profitability. The public markets, which had once lapped up the promise of a purpose-driven consumer brand, began to lose patience. The share price slid, the optimism evaporated, and what was once a darling became a cautionary tale.
And then, in what feels like a plot twist that would be rejected for being too on-the-nose, the company effectively sold itself for cents in the dollar. Investors who had bought into the dream were left holding something considerably less dreamy. In any rational telling of events, that should have been the end of the story. A nice, neat arc. Rise, fall, and a gentle fading into obscurity.
But of course, that’s not how things work anymore.
Because somewhere along the line, someone decided that Allbirds was, or could be, or might plausibly claim to be, an AI company. Not a shoe company that dabbles in technology, but something altogether more futuristic and, crucially, more investable. And just like that, the narrative shifted. The same business, the same fundamentals, the same history of burning cash, suddenly found itself bathed in the warm glow of artificial intelligence. The share price, which had been languishing, took off.
If you’re feeling a bit of whiplash, you’re not alone.
There’s something deeply unsettling about this. Not because companies shouldn’t evolve or explore new avenues, but because of how little the underlying reality seems to matter in the face of a compelling story. The shoes didn’t suddenly become more comfortable. The balance sheet didn’t magically repair itself. The hard, unglamorous work of building a profitable, resilient business didn’t disappear. What changed was the label.
Public markets, at least in theory, are supposed to be mechanisms for price discovery. A place where information is aggregated, analysed, and distilled into a number that reflects the value of a company. It’s all very elegant in textbooks. In practice, it can look more like a group of people chasing whatever shiny object happens to be in vogue this quarter.
We’ve seen this movie before. Dot-coms adding “.com” to their names and watching valuations soar. Blockchain suddenly appearing in corporate strategy documents as if by magic. And now, of course, AI. It’s the narrative of the moment, and it’s a powerful one. Investors don’t just want growth, they want to feel like they’re part of the future. If you can position yourself as a vehicle for that future, the details can become, if not irrelevant, then at least secondary.
That’s the disconnect. Reality is messy, incremental, and often disappointing. Narrative is clean, exciting, and full of possibility. The trouble starts when the latter completely overwhelms the former.
For public companies, this creates a strange kind of incentive structure. It’s not enough to do the slow, steady work of building a business. You also have to tell a story that captures the imagination of the market. Ideally, that story aligns with whatever macro theme is currently dominating headlines. Climate tech, AI, whatever comes next. The danger is that management teams start optimising for narrative rather than substance, because that’s what moves the share price.
And the share price, in turn, becomes a kind of feedback loop. A rising price validates the story, attracting more attention, more capital, more belief. A falling price does the opposite, regardless of what’s actually happening on the ground. It’s not that fundamentals don’t matter at all, but they can take a back seat for surprisingly long periods.
In the case of Allbirds, the journey from sustainable footwear darling to cash-burning disappointment to AI-adjacent phoenix is almost too perfect an illustration. It shows just how elastic perception can be, and how willing the market is to rewrite the narrative when given even the slightest excuse.
None of this is entirely new, of course. Markets have always had an element of theatre about them. But it does feel like the gap between reality and narrative is widening. Information moves faster, trends catch on more quickly, and the collective attention span seems to be shrinking. In that environment, a good story can travel a long way before anyone stops to ask whether it actually makes sense.
I still can’t say I ever really got Allbirds. Maybe that’s on me. Maybe I missed something. But watching this whole saga unfold, it’s hard not to feel that what we’re really buying and selling in public markets isn’t companies at all, but stories. And as long as the story is compelling enough, reality can wait its turn.
It is always the atory. But wothout substance and hard work stories disappear into smoke.