Monday, August 12, 2002
Well, it looks as if Silicon Valley has and continues to go "belly-up". The days of venture-capitalism are gone. Ground-up and/or practical solution-making business is more on the rise. Take a look who went down this week:
From MSNBC:
There was a time in Los Angeles, after the land boom of the Eighties, when it was safe to say that the definition of “movie producer” was “anyone who owned LA real estate prior to 1985.” In Silicon Valley in the late Nineties the definition of venture capitalist was “anyone with an MBA and a few rich friends.” VCs ruled and the competition for their attention was intense. For example, drivers on Highways 101 and 280 between San Francisco and San Jose were often baffled by huge billboards promoting Web sites that wouldn’t launch for months. These billboards were rented by entrepreneurs trying to reach the handful of VCs who drove those freeways every day on the way to VC world headquarters on Sand Hill Road.
Red Herring and Upside were also ways to reach that small, elite audience, so both thrived on an even more esoteric kind of advertising than your average technology publication.
Now the VC shakeout is underway-last quarter, for the first time since 1970 (as far back as the data go), VCs returned more money (unused) to investors than they raised. That has profound implications for the segment of Silicon Valley — real estate, law, public relations, accounting, even publishing — that has grown up to support the pre-eminent entrepreneurship engine on the planet.
From MSNBC:
There was a time in Los Angeles, after the land boom of the Eighties, when it was safe to say that the definition of “movie producer” was “anyone who owned LA real estate prior to 1985.” In Silicon Valley in the late Nineties the definition of venture capitalist was “anyone with an MBA and a few rich friends.” VCs ruled and the competition for their attention was intense. For example, drivers on Highways 101 and 280 between San Francisco and San Jose were often baffled by huge billboards promoting Web sites that wouldn’t launch for months. These billboards were rented by entrepreneurs trying to reach the handful of VCs who drove those freeways every day on the way to VC world headquarters on Sand Hill Road.
Red Herring and Upside were also ways to reach that small, elite audience, so both thrived on an even more esoteric kind of advertising than your average technology publication.
Now the VC shakeout is underway-last quarter, for the first time since 1970 (as far back as the data go), VCs returned more money (unused) to investors than they raised. That has profound implications for the segment of Silicon Valley — real estate, law, public relations, accounting, even publishing — that has grown up to support the pre-eminent entrepreneurship engine on the planet.
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posted by Brian & Brian at 12:42 PM
