Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley, an editorial from the Wall Street Journal. The main thing the article misses is that while the economics of startups are currently distorted doing a startup is still one of the best ways to change the world, for your work to have an impact far beyond the walls of a single company. I’ve seen some killer startups recently, my only hope is that they have enough runway to make it to the execution of their idea. Entrepreneurship.gov says “Freedom is just another word for entrepreneurship.”
Working in a big company, which was just a startup 10 years ago, I can tell you that even for us these new rules are not fun. It really limits the flexibility you can move your business or the speed you can act on opportunities.
The lawyers always get a saying in the process, which might cover your ass, but will slow down the process.
I didn’t know anybody still took the WSJ editorial page seriously; that ship has saled a long time ago. The key graph is the last — the author has a set of policy provisions and the rest of the entire article is a bunch of fabricated handwaving to try to justify supporting them to other people.
He’s wrong about why IPOs are down, by the way, the reason they’re down is because most tech IPOs were pure garbage and investors finally learned to stay away from most of them. (As google showed… not all.)
Good projects succeed. it’s still easier than ever before to start your own business. While it is true that securing start up capital is more difficult currently, I think the bigger issue is competition. Since so many can do it, it’s harder to make an impact, even when you have a quality service or product.
Yeah, I am with dbt with regards to the wall street journal’s relevance. the paper’s value went south the moment they sold to murdoch. its gone from a paper with traditional conservative leanings to the modern day fad of rabid and irrational hatred of any government at all.
Very powerful piece.
Since we love technology so much, some of us can eventually lose sight of the utter importance of financing, in the global scheme of things.
The venture capital money flow must not be stopped because if that were to happen (and it seems it’s happening, now), the consequences are very real and nobody stands to be happy in a world without innovation.
Everybody should read that article…
I believe we are on an Identity Crisis Rather than an economy crisis. If we want to have our identity known to the Universe we simply would have to patiently wait while moving on with our projects. Time will prove the progress, our progress, and we can have our voice heard into the Universe.
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
Ioan
Great comment! Especially the freedom part.
The country seems to be in the mood for less risk, aka innovation, and more government.
Sad because we’re just at the point when so many established structures are dying of old age and need to be reconstructed — the financial, media, government, business, etc. models are all under duress. They were created for another age.
The only way to get them to function again is innovation which involves risk. The very thing government is not particularly good at.
Been using WordPress to follow the media transition and did a post on the end of Web 2.0 —
http://www.susanfitzgerald.com/blog/2008/11/05/the-end-of-web-20/
Seem to be lots of people saying the same thing.
Fingers crossed for a Happy New Year!