Daily Archives: July 18, 2012

The end of Assad

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Steve Coll thinks that Assad is finished.

Now, Assad’s coming demise seems less of an argument than an observation. It looks probable that the President will take his place among the war’s victims, at the hands of a coup-maker within his ranks, or else at the hands of a rebel attack, in the manner of Muammar Qaddafi’s death at the climax of Libya’s rebellion. It is conceivable that Assad could slip into exile, perhaps to a dacha outside Moscow, where deposed Soviet clients and spies used to settle into retirement and give the occasional bitter interview to a Western correspondent back during the Cold War.

Venture Capitalists: the slash-and-burn artists of technology

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Eventually the generation that Fred Wilson [of Union Square Ventures] leads will fall behind, as did the one led by John Doerr at Kleiner-Perkins. What they will be replaced with is one that is not only aware of the usability of products, but also has a sense for the flow of open technologies to fuel the ecosystem. These VCs will make side investments in technologies that are not intended to produce an IPO or acquisition, rather are intended to produce a new layer of technology that a whole generation of startups can feed off. At the same time, some percentage of each fund will be plowed into programs designed to generate the next layer after that.

The VCs will tell you that it’s not their business to fund innovation for the sake of innovation. That’s as short-sighted as saying that an oil company wouldn’t invest in exploration or research into new extraction methods. Or if you got good service at a restaurant you wouldn’t leave a 15 percent tip. Of course you don’t have to do either. But if you don’t do some exploration or leave decent tips, you’ll be out of business one day, or get hot coffee spilled in your lap.

I’ve always felt that as long as Moore’s Law is operating, and it shows no sign of letting up, that we aren’t doing our jobs if the tech industry isn’t tracking its growth in a linear fashion. The boom-bust cycle is a product of the lack of vision of the VCs. Or our over-reliance on VCs to lead the investment decisions of the tech industry.

This post by Dave Winer is interesting because of its rarity. Insiders in the technology industry rarely write or talk in public about venture capitalists, probably because they think they might need them some day. Or they believe in appeasement (defined by Winston Churchill as “being nice to a crocodile in the hope that he will eat you last”.) As a result the public has a peculiarly rosy — and misleading — impression of them. There are, of course, good VCs: I know a few. But there are an awful lot of creepy, destructive ones too. One of the lovely stories in Michael Lewis’s great book about Jim Clark concerns Clark’s decision to exclude from the Netscape IPO the VC who had screwed him at Silicon Graphics. The guy committed suicide as a result, and I remember thinking at the time that it looked like a fitting conclusion to a sordid career.

TIJABP

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Lovely blog post by Dave Winer.

I’d like to propose a new acronym. TIJABP.

This. Is. Just. A. Blog. Post.

In other words, this is not the US Constitution or the Declaration of Independence.

Or the Treaty of Versailles or even legally binding.

It’s not Hey Jude or Beethoven’s 9th.

Not Catcher In The Rye or Annie Hall.

And it’s definitely not the 10th inning of Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. (Yo Mookie!)

It’s just a blog post, so read it that way.

Twas written quickly, by one (busy) person, who then moved on to something else.