Bubble Shy
Marc Andreessen, an undisputed Silicon Valley technology leader, addresses the Web 2.0 bubble misconception in an essay that has lots of great points. He mentions that all of us in the technology industry are a little gun shy, since many of us were hit very hard by the dot com crash of 2001. I even expressed some jitters with the recent buyout of Last.fm.
He uses a baseball analogy that is, itself, a home run.
The whole structure of how the technology industry gets funded — by venture capitalists, angel investors, and Wall Street — is predicated on the baseball model.
Out of ten swings at the bat, you get maybe seven strikeouts, two base hits, and if you are lucky, one home run.
The base hits and the home runs pay for all the strikeouts.
When looking at it like that, it makes it a little easier for me to ease back on the snark and realize that, as Paul Graham said, “If most of your ideas aren’t stupid, you’re probably being too conservative.“
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