on valley boys
BW's coverage on Valley Boys listed some interesting personalities - all very inspiring.
Some snippets for thos who missed it...
The corporate giant's failure to gain inroads so far shows that simply copying Digg won't work. It also spells out why Old Media types are so afraid of being eaten alive by the creative destruction these young new players are delivering. The barriers to entry are now so low that all it takes is a laptop and a $50-a-month Internet hookup to make a kid the next mogul.
Rose hints that there's going to be more to Digg than just democratizing the news. "Why would you sell unless you feel you've played your hand?" he asks.
The thought of selling all or even a large piece of his venture brings back some bad memories. Rose and all the other geeks know someone from the last boom who was worth millions one month, only to move into his parents' basement the next. Indeed, Valley-wide, guys like Rose, his entourage of buddies, and many others are haunted by the years when the weekly rooftop parties died, the traffic thinned, and no one needed restaurant reservations. This time around, the entrepreneurs worry that, within a moment, the money -- and their projects -- could vanish.
But for now, Rose is the "It" boy among a new wave of entrepreneurs running the hottest of the top 100 Web 2.0 companies sprinkled around the Bay Area. Together, this network of mostly Valley boys -- Six Apart Ltd. co-founder Mena Trott is a rare female among them -- fill SF bars like Anu and Wish and Cav and parties at their sparsely furnished lofts.
Clearly much has changed since 1999, and Rose and his fellow wealth punks have little in common with the sharp-talking MBAs in crisp khakis and blue button-downs who rushed the Valley as the NASDAQ climbed. In the late 1990s, entrepreneurs were the supplicants, and Sand Hill Road, dotted with venture-capital firms, was the mecca. Dot-commers relied on VCs for the millions needed to buy hardware, rent servers, hire designers, and advertise like crazy to bring in the eyeballs. For their big stakes of, say, $15 million for 20% of a company, venture capitalists received board seats, control of the management levers, and most of the equity.
Now, it's more like: Maybe we'll let you throw a few bucks our way -- if you get it. Otherwise, get lost. That's possible because the cost of jump-starting a good idea has plummeted. At the same time, the sources of money have multiplied, swirling in from new VC shops, angel investors, and strategic partners galore. The awash-in-capital environment has flipped the power dynamic. Sure, they'll take money from the "sweater vests," as Digg CEO Jay Adelson calls the VCs, but they'll do it on their own terms. "It's a good time now for the entrepreneur," says John Freeman, a professor at University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "There are lots of different pots of money. It gives them the ability to modify when they take it, [and] how much they take, and leaves them with more control."
Some snippets for thos who missed it...
The corporate giant's failure to gain inroads so far shows that simply copying Digg won't work. It also spells out why Old Media types are so afraid of being eaten alive by the creative destruction these young new players are delivering. The barriers to entry are now so low that all it takes is a laptop and a $50-a-month Internet hookup to make a kid the next mogul.
Rose hints that there's going to be more to Digg than just democratizing the news. "Why would you sell unless you feel you've played your hand?" he asks.
The thought of selling all or even a large piece of his venture brings back some bad memories. Rose and all the other geeks know someone from the last boom who was worth millions one month, only to move into his parents' basement the next. Indeed, Valley-wide, guys like Rose, his entourage of buddies, and many others are haunted by the years when the weekly rooftop parties died, the traffic thinned, and no one needed restaurant reservations. This time around, the entrepreneurs worry that, within a moment, the money -- and their projects -- could vanish.
But for now, Rose is the "It" boy among a new wave of entrepreneurs running the hottest of the top 100 Web 2.0 companies sprinkled around the Bay Area. Together, this network of mostly Valley boys -- Six Apart Ltd. co-founder Mena Trott is a rare female among them -- fill SF bars like Anu and Wish and Cav and parties at their sparsely furnished lofts.
Clearly much has changed since 1999, and Rose and his fellow wealth punks have little in common with the sharp-talking MBAs in crisp khakis and blue button-downs who rushed the Valley as the NASDAQ climbed. In the late 1990s, entrepreneurs were the supplicants, and Sand Hill Road, dotted with venture-capital firms, was the mecca. Dot-commers relied on VCs for the millions needed to buy hardware, rent servers, hire designers, and advertise like crazy to bring in the eyeballs. For their big stakes of, say, $15 million for 20% of a company, venture capitalists received board seats, control of the management levers, and most of the equity.
Now, it's more like: Maybe we'll let you throw a few bucks our way -- if you get it. Otherwise, get lost. That's possible because the cost of jump-starting a good idea has plummeted. At the same time, the sources of money have multiplied, swirling in from new VC shops, angel investors, and strategic partners galore. The awash-in-capital environment has flipped the power dynamic. Sure, they'll take money from the "sweater vests," as Digg CEO Jay Adelson calls the VCs, but they'll do it on their own terms. "It's a good time now for the entrepreneur," says John Freeman, a professor at University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "There are lots of different pots of money. It gives them the ability to modify when they take it, [and] how much they take, and leaves them with more control."
posted by g.e. at 12:03 AM
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