I wrote this last May in draft form and have finally gotten around to finishing it. How quickly the conventional wisdom changes, now everyone knows we are in a recession. Of course you should “raise as much money as you can, enough to last you for a few years until the recession is over” is also part of the conventional wisdom. As my Uncle John would have observed: it’s generally accepted, so generally accepted it may not be true at all.”
May 9, 2007: Report from Silicon Valley
So we are starting to pump a little hot air back into the bubble every week now. The streets of Silicon Valley witness young entrepreneurs looking for department store Santas venture capitalists to listen to their list of needs and make their dreams come true. It’s “not as nuts as 99” but not as sane, or dour, as 2003. Roger Macnamee blogged for the better part of 2004 on “The New Normal” with this as his inaugural post:
Wake up and smell the coffee. This is not your father’s economy. And it’s not the boom that inflated our expectations and then exploded. But it’s also not the doom and gloom we’ve been mired in for nearly three years now! So, wake up. Pull yourself together. Get on with it. With what you ask? With the rest of your life. It’s a bright, fresh world full of opportunities. I know that runs counter to many of the opinions all around us, but it’s true, and I can show you why. It’s true for the investor, the entrepreneur, the CEO, the unemployed, and the human being seeking balance. This blog will be dedicated to insights and discussion about life, business, and investment in what I call The New Normal.
Please join in!
Now I regularly have conversations that remind me of 1997-2000. I am routinely admonished that “the old rules no longer apply” and advised that successful firms spend much of their treasure on PR social media and viral marketing (regular marketing is a waste of money since viral marketing is free). YouTube’s 1.6 billion dollar exit is the exemplar burned in 10 mile high neon letters into the back of everyone’s retinas.
This is not a lament nor a longing for the early 90’s (or early 80’s), now is the best time to be alive and an entrepreneur. It’s a wish that more firms would aim for creating value for their customers.
