Sent to you by Sean McBride via Google Reader: Robert Scoble: Just at the point where I'm starting to get over my fears I visit TechMeme and noticed that Sequoia's fears are at the top. Ahh, good, the VCs are five days late in losing their minds. FriendFeed FTW! (via FriendFeed) via FriendFeed on 10/8/08 Robert Scoble posted a message “Just at the point where I'm starting to get over my fears I visit TechMeme and noticed that Sequoia's fears are at the top. Ahh, good, the VCs are five days late in losing their minds. FriendFeed FTW!” 11:32 pm - Comment Mike Reynolds, Susan Beebe, Louis Gray and 10 other people liked this Robert why don't you go take a drive down to Sand Point Drive and go knocking on doors? - Christopher Welle You mean Sand Hill where all the VCs are? I might do that. But tomorrow I have a webinar on scalability with three cool startups so I'd rather hang out with them (and I'm doing several interviews in the afternoon with other startups). - Robert Scoble You should remind those startups how lucky they are to have secured $$$ before all this. - Shawn Farner In your up coming interviews are you planning on asking about how the financial crisis is effecting them? - Christopher Welle Shawn: they already know that. You missed that I was walking around Palo Alto with Tapulous's CEO right after the market had gone down $777 and a guy came up to him in the street reminding him of just that. Everyone I talk to sees a storm coming into town and are hoping it doesn't rip down their house. - Robert Scoble sorry Robert but too me that is the wrong choice and my reasons why are this. We are headed into some really hard times. These are the money men and IIRC a lot of them have been down this road before. You do video that is watched by a lot of people. These VC need to get out there and reassure because they *are* the money the Valley needs to keep running but we need to know what they think and you can bring that to life in video better than any written word. - Steven Hodson Christopher: I've been asking everyone that. So far very few have felt direct pain yet. The ones who are probably going to be first to feel it directly are the public companies. SAP is just the first to report nasty stuff happening in the economy. That's why I say that there's still downward pressure on stocks. The storm hasn't hit yet, and when it does, we'll see another bang down in the market. - Robert Scoble Steven: good point. You should watch my video with Allegis' Capital's founder. Yeah, it was right before the full brunt of the stock market downturn hit, but he notes that major opportunity opens up after people lose their jobs. Just like in last downturn. But he also notes that VCs are pack animals and tend to behave the same way the rest of the market does. I can already feel them getting pickier about what they are funding. - Robert Scoble There's two things about this, I'd hope that VC simply evaluate their investments more wisely. I've seen a few startups since 2005 onward that are merely bloated and need to trim some fat, perhaps stopping the burn of vc dollars; in turn, continued support of authentically forward thinking and benefial companies is an absolute must. - Enrique Gutierrez @Robert - have you ever thought about interviewing the Prof. and Chair of an undergraduate bioengineering program? One centered on complex systems, http://www.how-why.com/ucs2008... - Julian Baldwin Julian: nope, but that's an interesting idea, thanks! Why are they interesting to what's going on in the economy? - Robert Scoble @Robert - very much so, see the first two posts http://blog.irvingwb.com/blog/... - Julian Baldwin NYTimes article http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.... talks about reasons VCs are concerned/fearful. "Investors such as pension funds and endowments set aside a certain percentage of their money for alternative investments, which include venture capital. Now, with their wealth evaporating, they either no longer have money to invest or they suddenly find that venture capital is a much larger percentage of their assets than they had planned, so they cut back." - Atul Arora I'm never surprised when VCs are a little late in the game ;) - anna VC business is tough, some of them lost on Wall Street too:) - Barbara Duck live a bit more in the present, a bit less in a speculative future, a lot of worry goes away - Gregory Lent pop goes the bubble. - Duncan Riley Things you can do from here: - Subscribe to FriendFeed using Google Reader - Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites
