Silicon Valley Has Two Speeds
A fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal Magazine by Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn. A few excerpts:
Silicon Valley has two speeds: full speed ahead and not going anywhere. Now we're in full-forward motion. There is a lot of interest and a lot of capital out here. And there are a lot of companies being created. When you have a thousand companies getting started, many of them hope to become billion-dollar companies, but a number of them won't play out in that direction. So in that respect, sure, there is some frothiness. On the other hand, many of them have solid fundamentals. Maybe it won't be a billion-dollar company, but it will be an ongoing value proposition where the business model works, consumers use it, and it fits in with other services and websites.What's happening today with the whole Web 2.0 movement is that everyone is familiar with the Internet and how it works. Back in 1999 and 2000 it was this weird thing called "cyberspace." It was kind of an adventure as opposed to being part of your everyday life. The Internet has become a medium in which we are all participants. And then our mobile devices enable all kinds of abilities to communicate, search, collaborate and socialize our experience in the electronic medium. That's a lot of the basis for the current boom. We also have a deeper stack of expertise as to what works and what doesn't. The playbooks are better. There are clearly more substantive ideas...
When we are evaluating new business pitches at Greylock, we look for product people and deeply passionate people. To make a great product, you have to be passionate about it in order for it to become something that will improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people...When the idea is on the back of a napkin, the only difference between a madman and a visionary is that the visionary's idea works. So when you are investing at very early stages, you're picking the one you think is the visionary...Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.
Read the whole thing.