Why One of Silicon Valley’s Savviest Investors Has Shut His Wallet | Hacker News Reader

Why One of Silicon Valley’s Savviest Investors Has Shut His Wallet

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179 pointshef1989858 comments

“Everyone is competing for the same people, going after the same real estate, the same support services,” Hartz says. “The natural resources of the startup world are getting scarcer and scarcer, and the cost is getting higher and higher. It’s all an outgrowth of an abundance of capital.”

And largely still doing this in just a few square miles in California. Are investors so emotionally tied to one geographic area that long-term investing in other areas of the US is strictly verboten? Techstars and other programs should be demonstrating there's 'natural resources' outside of California, no?

Exactly. Every time I hear somebody talk about the "overabundance of capital" in the startup world, I want to grab them by the shoulders, stare them in the eyes and scream frantically like a mad-man "Have you been to RTP (NC) ?!?!??"

OK, not quite that bad, but still, you get the drift. What's happening in California is not necessarily indicative of what's going on in the rest of the world. Research Triangle Park, for example, is FAR from having enough capital freely available, much less too much. Look at the most recent Triangle Startup Factory class... they took, what, six startups out of - IIRC - a hundred and some applications?

Now to be fair, probably not all 100 of those startups are worthy of funding... But I know there were more than six worthy startups in the Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill area as of March, 2012.

What's RTP?

Research Triangle Park

It's the area where Chapel Hill, Durham, and Raleigh, NC are.

Strictly speaking, RTP[1] is a small area (mostly) in Durham County, NC, where a research park is located, where a lot of major technology and pharma companies, and tons of small companies, have R&D and/or manufacturing operations.

Colloquially, people use "RTP" as shorthand for "The Triangle"[2] which is generally considered an area roughly defined by a triangle of lines connecting Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill. Or, depending on your take, connecting Duke University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and NC State University.

RTP (or "The Triangle") is a tech hub in the Southeast region, and is becoming quite a startup hotbed. But one of the limitations of this area is lack of access to early stage capital. Of all the things that hurt entrepreneurs in this area, that's probably the single most encountered problem. :-(

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle_Park

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Research_Triangle

I've been living in RTP for the past 2 or 3 years and continue to get surprised by how many well known developers are in the area.

For us yankees that exist on the "coasts", anywhere outside of NYC, SF, and LA are foreign lands, and somewhere like NC may as well be the moon.

That is a bit unfair, but unsurprising. People choose to work where they want to live, and they'll work with the people they're most familiar with and understand, in the environment around them.

This isn't a political statement, it's a comment about culture as it relates to recruiting valuable and scarce talent. Startup culture tends to be highly meritocratic. It lends itself to openness toward who you are as an individual as long as you work hard, work smart and achieve.

Given this, I can't imagine trying to recruit the best and the brightest to NC given recent developments when there are more accepting places like NY, Silicon Valley, Seattle, etc. There are a ton of talented people who wouldn't want to live there. I'll concede that there may be others who want to live there more because of what went down, but those same people could be recruited almost anywhere without a meaningful depreciation in quality of life.

There's no question that A1 gave NC a black eye, and it does hurt. How much it hurts is a different question. My perception, having lived in NC my entire life, and having worked in the RTP area for 12 years, is that talent isn't the major holdup here. There is a ton of talent here, at least on a transitional basis, by virtue of the fact that people come here to attend NCSU, UNC and Duke (all 3 are very well respected and regarded schools) and because IBM, Cisco, GSK, and a pile of other companies have large presences here. The big challenge, talent wise, is to keep the folks who are graduating from UNC, NCSU, Duke, etc., here, instead of moving off to $WHEREVER. Not easy, but - believe it or not - NC has a lot going for it, A1 aside.

Regarding the "recent developments", RTP jumps out on the following map:

http://www.wral.com/news/political/page/10991843/

Durham and Orange Counties voted no by over 2-1 margins. And meanwhile, Proposition 8 passed in California a few years back; indeed, such propositions have been passed everywhere in the US where they've been put to the voters as a whole. North Carolina is not distinguished in this respect.

I personally like San Francisco over RTP, despite originally being from Durham, but there is a lot that is very good about the RTP area, and I personally know a lot of very talented people who are extremely happy (if, admittedly, a little bit less so this week...) to call it home.

Not to be nitpicky, but NC did distinguish itself from Proposition 8 in banning civil unions and domestic partnerships, too.

NC is a wonderful place, I was making the comment that now it's just a little harder to recruit great people there. Perception matters when scaling a company. Starting a 10 person team is probably fine. Scaling to a 100-200 team gets that much harder.

What on earth does this have to do with technical talent?

Projecting your political opinions a bit?

Some technical talent is directly impacted by these types of laws and we care. The last time I got an e-mail asking me about a position in Qatar I just sent back a link to this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Qatar along with a few polite words.

The guy was sympathetic, but we both knew that was the end of that conversation.

For some of us this isn't a matter of politics, but an impact on our quality of life. And for others of us, it may just be a matter of politics, but even then, that doesn't mean it's trivial.

In Richard Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class", he describes an experiment, complete with empirical data, that show an overwhelming positive correlation between gay-friendliness and positive economic outlook.

Just to add some anecdotal evidence, I'm a college student in NC but I'll be leaving for SF on Saturday and I can't wait.

Replying to my own thread here:

If an investor was watching one of their companies continually chasing a limited resource and paying an ever-higher price for those resources just to keep their business going, wouldn't they counsel the company to change their business model some? Look outside the box? Look for different suppliers to keep the costs down, create a competitive advantage, etc?

I'd counsel the company to turn a profit.

But I'm not in silicon valley.

There is a naivete here that thinks geographic distance means the economies of disparate locales are disconnected. As the center of the startup scene, that few square miles in California will set the pace for the nation as a whole.

I really don't understand the over fixation on Silicon Valley. I lived there for awhile. Its got high population density is full of a lot of fake people (people who are happy to "help" your startup for just a taste of the equity), fake investors, and an extraordinary amount of noise. I'm sure there are many people who love it for the same reasons that high pressure finance types love new york city.

But this seems anathema to building a good startup- where you need some isolation some time to focus and to keep a broad and rational perspective, not to be high on each others fumes.

Plus, the bay area is very expensive, it attracts engineers who are more likely to jump to the next hot startup, its hard to find good office space, etc.

It isn't like you can't get broadband everywhere.

And I think people really misunderestimate the importance of good engineers who stick around. Turnover means critical knowledge is walking out the door.

This makes bumfuck Ohio[1] a better place if retaining talent is important. The idea that only Stanford educated engineers are good enough to work at startups is silly. (my experience- finding the best engineers is not correlated with ivy league degrees.)

Bumfuck Ohio may not have the cool meet ups that SV has, but it doesn't have the two orders of magnitude more distractions that SV has as well. Nor does it have the jealousy driven culture where every 4th person has an overpriced show off car, etc.

The reason everyone focuses on the Valley? People are focused on venture capital, not building profitable businesses. Venture capital lives in the valley because for a lot of these VC firms a 90 minute flight to Seattle for a board meeting is just too much effort.

That's it.

[1] Nothing against Ohio, never been there, just picking it for an example.

Every place has a specialty so I wouldn't say everything happens in SV. They just happen to be more web focused than a lot of other places. Want to do finance computing? NYC. Government and aerospace? DC-Maryland-Virginia metro. Movies and VFX? LA.

Obviously there are outliers, which have a rich cross section of talent, Miami, Chicago, Charlotte. But if you want to get a web-based business up and running and need a deep pool of talent there is no better place than Silicon Valley.

I really don't understand the over fixation on Silicon Valley.

I think the rest of your comment is elaboration on this theme. You don't understand, mainly because your views are distorted. A couple of examples to give you the idea:

it attracts engineers who are more likely to jump to the next hot startup

Untrue. Certainly you can find those types, but the Bay Area is full of people who are willing to stick with a company they believe in. It's just that you're focussing on smaller, more questionable startups. They're not the majority.

This makes bumfuck Ohio[1] a better place if retaining talent is important.

But you are much less likely to find talented engineers who just happen to live in Bumfuck, Ohio. Nerds tend to flock, because flocking is important. Startups need an ecosystem.

Nor does it have the jealousy driven culture where every 4th person has an overpriced show off car, etc.

I've been a Bay Area professional for 20 years, have worked at multiple startups, and have yet to see "every 4th person" with a show-off car. I think I know two or three people with super-expensive cars. Most people in the Bay Area who are involved in startups are serious about business and technology. That's why we have so many major success stories, and smaller ones you probably haven't heard of — for example, have you heard of Workday? It's a SaaS company started by Dave Duffield, who founded and ran PeopleSoft previously. Workday is growing like a weed, not because of wild infusions of crazy venture cash, but because it's a good service and the customer base is expanding.

The reason everyone focuses on the Valley? People are focused on venture capital, not building profitable businesses.

Wholly untrue. The entire focus is on building successful, profitable businesses, not on raking in VC money. That's why Heroku, Salesforce (which bought Heroku), Evernote, Dropbox, and — since history matters — Apple, Oracle, and even HP are here. I could make a much bigger list of successful and up-and-coming startups, but you can do the research if you actually are interested.

You're focused on trivial companies and outlying flakey people. They're not the majority.

I think Paul Graham has discussed this fairly well:

http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html

I live in Alabama. I joke that "high tech" here means "installing Windows and supporting Sharepoint" and it's not far from the truth. If I weren't the "trailing spouse" of an academic there's no way I'd live here given my skill set. It follows that people with similar or complementary skill sets to mine are hard to find here.

I have friends on the west coast who can pull together a project using friends and colleagues working in their spare time (gee, I wonder how Apple got started...). Similarly, when I was working in California I would frequently get requests from colleagues to contribute to their projects and often give them finished pieces they could plug into their projects the next morning. This kind of talent density is a huge "force multiplier". In the time it would take me to, say, find a designer or scalability guy I can work with who is willing to put sweat equity into a project, or do something for me for a few bucks, blah blah blah -- in Silicon Valley it would already be a working demo with seed money.

In fact, it's worse than that. I've been trying to find locals to work with me on stuff for years. I've built projects start-to-finish (but with missing pieces) several times over in that time.

I'm in Bama too. We've got plenty of brilliant people but they can be difficult to find and usually aren't well-connected. Want to get coffee sometime?

Love to!

I moved to SF from bumfuck Ohio (Swanton) last year and it was one of the best decisions of my life. Besides the great weather and quality if life here, the thing I enjoy most is being around people who "get it".

Ohio wants microsoft and SAP developers. The small biz dev help and incubators only care about manufacturing, specifically solar. Finding like-minded entrepreneurs is like finding a needle in a haystack. Finding a co-founder with the same level of technical skill is just plain impossible. Thats just a taste of it.

[edit typos on Bart]

The same reason uranium ore doesn't explode. Density. I lived in several other places filled with talented people--in other industries. They just weren't interested in what I was doing. Risking all my time and money on a tech startup seemed strange and maybe crazy. Here the vibe changes as soon as you step off the plane and buy a coffee.

One thing about California is that state law explicitly says anything developed on your own time with your own equipment is yours (obvious conflicts with your employer aside).

Every employment contract I have seen outside of California has said something to the effect that anything you develop, no matter whose time and equipment is used, or relevance to your job or employer belongs to them. Even if you worked for a software company, coming up with new cat food would belong to them. Many times there is also a non-compete but at least some states require payment during the non-compete period.

This lack of "friction" in California makes for a more vibrant scene in starting companies and getting people to join.

It's not hard to find a contract that only gives them rights to things that are relevant to their interests. Mine lets me have anything that isn't relevant.

Of course I'd prefer to keep anything I think of on my own time, but proving that it was on my own time is nearly impossible, and I think this provides them some protection against assholes. And I have no interest in competing against my employer anyhow.

Virtually every employment contract I have seen even inside California is extremely biased towards the company owning everything. It is just that in most cases that contract isn't enforceable, even if you sign it.

"Even if you worked for a software company, coming up with new cat food would belong to them."

As would any terrorist plans or child porn. This has come up a couple times in contracts with employers in the past, and I tell them they really don't want to own everything I develop, and I've had that clause struck from a contract with a bit of pushing.

I've encountered several contracts in California where they ask you to list everything you created outside of the company. The implication is that anything you don't list was then created while working for the company and hence implicitly owned by them. They explained the provision is for my benefit. I finally just started putting in "Numerous past and future works identified with my personal copyright".

I'm usually not a fan of the dismissive tone that is customary in many a HN comment, but you simply don't know what you're talking about.

> "Plus, the bay area is very expensive, it attracts engineers who are more likely to jump to the next hot startup, its hard to find good office space, etc."

I disagree completely. Engineers here are no more likely to jump ship than anywhere else - the difference is that in some geographies you can keep people tied to you via lack of opportunities (i.e., "so... who exactly in town is hiring?"), but with mobility so prevalent these days, even that won't hold a skilled engineer for long.

And from my own experience - I was the first one on the ground setting up a satellite office for a company not based in SF. I found a great office space in 2 days.

> "This makes bumfuck Ohio[1] a better place if retaining talent is important."

As an engineer in SF, I simply have no interest in living in bumfuck Ohio. You'd have to pay me considerably more than even SF levels of salary for me to make that sacrifice.

There are many places that may attract tech talent that isn't SF or the Valley - but they are all major metropolises, because they contain the lifestyle that the typically young-ish technology folk are looking for. In the current climate there is no reason for anyone to hole up in a backwater and not live life while they build their startup.

> "Turnover means critical knowledge is walking out the door."

Fully agreed. So who is more likely to stick around: someone who is getting paid a (very high) SF salary, meaningful equity, all the perks you can throw at them, interesting work, a city full of people who get technology, sunny weather, mild temperatures... or bumfuck Ohio, where salaries are severely depressed, and the community of hackers is small, and the people who surround simply don't get it?

> "Bumfuck Ohio may not have the cool meet ups that SV has"

Read: There are few opportunities to network. Meetups are a core part of what makes SV tick, not just between VCs and those hungry for funding, but between engineers. They are an incredibly powerful recruiting tool and exposure to new tech and new products.

> "People are focused on venture capital, not building profitable businesses."

Have you been to SF or SV? Have you actually met the startup folk around here?

> As an engineer in SF, I simply have no interest in living in bumfuck Ohio. You'd have to pay me considerably more than even SF levels of salary for me to make that sacrifice.

I think the point is there are great programmers already living in Ohio, who have family and ties there.

I really don't understand the over fixation on Silicon Valley.

There's a lot of history behind it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFSPHfZQpIQ

here's why I don't plan on leaving the bay area for anything other than the perfect job with the perfect pay and perfect benefits (note, those are all time-varient):

1) employment options: I'm most likely not going to work for the same company forever. I love my current company and coworkers, but I'm also realistic. I doubt I'll be at the same company in 10 years.

Many times the only way to get a raise or a promotion is to switch companies, not just because companies don't always hire from within, but because maybe they don't have any current openings to promote. Companies go through bad times and have to lay people off, too. Maybe the new product turned out to be a bust, so they only need about half the current team to start a new project. Maybe they want to re-org. Maybe my boss or a co-worker sucks so much that I don't want to work with them anymore, and there's no openings to switch teams. Maybe my family situation changes so I want to work more/less hours.

For whatever reason, I am almost certainly going to have to switch companies sometime between now and when I semi-retire in about 30 years or so. If I am in the valley, I know that I will be able to get another job relatively quickly, simply because there are a lot of job opportunities (there are tons of startups, quite a few large technology companies, and many smaller niche technology companies that no one outside of the relevant industry has heard of). Depending on the job market not completely tanking, I could have a job in as little time as immediately or as long as 6 months. During this time, I know I can also find contract work with another local company in addition to telecommuting contracting, if my emergency fund depletes early.

If I'm in Nowhere, USA, then it's a pretty good bet that the company I just left is the only game in town. That means I'm going to have to relocate or /(tele)?commute/ to a new job. That's not fun, especially if I have a wife with a job, or kids in school or both. Outside of Boston or NYC, I would be worried about finding a job quickly without having to move a significant distance. Even a place like Seattle, which has Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and a number of startups worries me a bit.

2) employment limitations: In CA noncompetes contracts are unenforceable. I don't know if this is the case in NYC, but in MA, noncompetes are legal, and from what I've heard usually about 1 year without pay. Which completely sucks for me, because the companies who will want to hire me the most will (most likely) be the competitors of the company i just left thanks to the skillset I've honed working for the previous company (eg, if I work on enterprise DB's, then I'm going to be much more employable as a DB engineer than as frontend javascript dev).

Honestly, I refuse to sign any non-compete unless I am paid my full salary and benefits for the entirety of the non-compete period, regardless of the reason for leaving. I doubt most companies would be willing to sign such an agreement or forgo a non-compete clause for a typical engineer, but even if they are, that is a whole bunch of extra negotiating I have to deal with that I don't have to deal with in CA.

3) what i develop in my free time: In CA, as long as I don't use company equipment, don't develop on company time, and don't develop something relating to the company, whatever I develop is entirely mine. This isn't always the case, and once again, just means a whole lot of extra negotiating if i'm working in a state where this isn't the case.

4) geography: in general, any point in CA is less than 120 miles (~2 hours drive time) from at least two completely different climates. This means that I don't have to travel far to "get away". Weekend trips are just a car ride away, and there are quite a few great state and national parks that are just a day trip away as well.

5) Salary and benefits: Salary isn't everything, but it is still very important to me, since I am not yet independently wealthy. Certain things like housing and food will adjust with my salary in different locations. Other things, like the price of a car or the size of my retirement fund ( I put away a fixed percentage of my income), or the cost of a vacation to someplace tropical won't. Taking a lower salary means a lower standard of living (unless the variable-with-geolocation cost expenses drop low enough relative to the salary drop on an absolute scale to make up the difference).

6) Relocating: I already touched on this, but relocating sucks. I have a fair amount of stuff that I either need to sell and buy again after relocating or bring with me. Hiring movers is expensive, but it saves me time from having to take time off to move myself. Moving myself is cheaper, but it is a timesink and adds stress to an already stressful process. In either case, there is still a rather large cost to relocating.

Regardless of where I am moving, I would at least want a relocation bonus to cover moving costs, and depending on how many tech companies are located where I'm moving I would also want a relocation bonus to move back to the bay area, where I know I can get another job (my new company might offer a relocation bonus as well, but not all companies offer this, and I don't want to limit my search to only companies offering relocation bonuses). Of course, the pragmatist in me tells me that getting a package like this will be practically impossible.

7) Culture: I love the fact that I am judged based on my abilities and not my outward appearance. I love being able to choose what I wear every day. I love that I can set my own hours within reason, so I can schedule doctor appointments, dentist appointment, car work appointments, and other things at reasonable hours. I love that short of a full-on emergency, crunch period or on-call rotation, my lunch hour(s), evening time, weekends, and vacation are my own. I love that my company provides many free drinks and snacks that run the gambit from healthy to junk. I love that my company has a large break room with TVs, game consoles, ping-pong, foosball, pinball, and pool and actually expects us to take breaks during the day to use the break room.

Many of these perks are nonexistent or limited compared to tech companies in other areas or non-tech companies with internal tech divisions. I also love that fact that most, if not all of these perks are pretty standard across tech companies in the bay area.

FWIW, there's a bunch of stuff I hate about the bay area, like high rent and house prices, expensive food, high state taxes, less than great public transportation outside in silicon valley, having to drive everywhere since it's usually too far to bike or walk outside of sf, high gas prices, &c., &c. Despite those things, though, I still find the benefits to working in the bay area compared to other areas far outweigh the disadvantages.

After hearing points 4 and 7 one could become jealous...

Number 4 is awesome! Portland, Reno, and San Diego are all weekend car-trips away (~8 hours 1 way, so 16 hours driving gives about a half a weekend's worth of time for exploring) for two or more people. You can also fly to have more time there, and flights are only about ~$150 round trip on Southwest. Then there's Napa, Monterrey, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite, Muir Woods, Point Reyes, Santa Cruz, Sonoma, and probably more that I'm forgetting as well. And then there's SF, Oakland, and San Jose, which all have events on the weekends, not to mention various things to do and see as well.

Number 7 is pretty great, too. Some are only going to be around until there is an abundance of well qualified software engineers, like free snacks and drinks and ornate gamerooms. But others, like flexible hours are just the nature of this job, so any place that understands how to maximize productivity will allow for this in various degrees.

And I'm just at a post-ipo company that most people haven't heard of, so it's not like i'm looking down from my ivory tower at facebook, apple, google, microsoft, or <trendy startup>.

> Are investors so emotionally tied to one geographic area that long-term investing in other areas of the US is strictly verboten?

I don't think it is quite as conspiratorial as you make it out to be. I was speaking to an active angel investor last night. He said he won't do a deal that is much more than an hours drive away. He feels like he can't really participate (as an advisor) to a company that he can't easily reach.

It is not unlikely that many (most?) of the Silicon Valley investors feel the same way.

Some companies and businesses manage to cobble together globe-spanning supply chains, so the excuse that they can't interact with "far away" people seems a bit dubious. Sooner or later, there will be VC's that figure out how to interact in a way that, while not 'as good' as being there in person, will be 'good enough', and will reap some nice profits from it.

There are a lot of good things about SV, but there are also some good reasons to get out and go to smaller hubs - stuff like Boulder, Portland, and other places like that where life is more enjoyable.

Angels are early-stage investors, and are often close advisers to the people they invest in.

I didn't say it was a conspiracy, but emotional ties.

His wanting to stay in a particular geographic area plus his desire to only invest in projects he can drive to is limiting him. That's fine. I'm not even suggesting he's complaining about a talent shortage. But others are.

Might he not have a similar quality of life and have access to some other great companies to invest in within an hour's drive and have less investment competition should he choose to move to, say, Louisiana? Or Mississippi? Or Tennessee? Or Texas?

It's not about emotion. It's about concentration of talent and drive, and geography does matter. People here in California, particularly in the Bay Area, think differently (apologies to SJ). Great startups are usually based on some sort of rule breaking, game change, or disruption. The non-conformist culture in CA especially lends it to this. That's why startups thrive here.

Edit: it's no coincidence that the startup hub in Texas is in Austin, the only place in Texas I'm aware of that has a non-conformist culture.

"He said he won't do a deal that is much more than an hours drive away. He feels like he can't really participate (as an advisor) to a company that he can't easily reach."

"He feels" is where I got emotion from.

Touch a piece of sandpaper, it "feels" rough. But there's no emotion.

If you must, substitute "believes" for "feels" in this scenario and you'll probably understand better.

Might he not have a similar quality of life and have access to some other great companies to invest in within an hour's drive and have less investment competition should he choose to move to, say, Louisiana? Or Mississippi? Or Tennessee? Or Texas?

Why would someone in a position to make angel investments move to a random new city just to have less investor competition?

I agree, the rest of the world is dying for these new products being created in SV, however they're being bought up and rolled up or snuffed out before the rest of the world really experiences them. This is especially true for the hyper local products that only service major metropolitan areas and some of the more "techier" social mobile products. Of course, I understand the rate of adoption in more rural areas doesn't fit the bing bang boom business model, but there is a crap ton of money to be made in the long haul.

</rant>

All that money makes novice entrepreneurs do funny things, Hartz says. “That relentless competition coupled with the cash tends to train entrepreneurs to be far more aggressive and less focused on things like measurable results,” Hartz says. “There are some entrepreneurs who can and should be aggressive, but they possess a certain type of pattern recognition, an understanding about what’s really lifting a business.”

The investment game has got tough. Not only do you need to gamble on an uncertain business model, now you have to compete with a growing investor population. With all the noise and vying investment dollars it is not so a bad idea to sit out and hang on to your past investments.

Unfortunately not everyone has the same portfolio as Hartz....

  investment in internet companies at $1.4 billion was down
  slightly in dollar terms in Q1 of 2012 compared to the
  end of 2011

To me, this is a clear sign we're not in a bubble. Investments don't slow down in a bubble, which is exactly why they're so dangerous, they just pop.

Seems to me like investors are pretty smart this time around, and are doing everything to avoid a bubble.

That includes $250MM to dropbox in Q4. Imagine if they had closed in 2012 - the same statistic would show investments up like 40% or 50% quarter over quarter. It also doesn't include angels.

“When people openly mock the consumer internet space and the excesses of it, that’s when I will start investing again.”

What? people are already mocking the consumer internet space

They weren't (at least not so much) 3-4 years ago, but now? instagram just broke the levees.

That was the only sentence in the article that didn't make sense to me at all. But the rest sounds quite logic to me.

When VC descend down to Angel rounds and Angels are substituted by incubators and accelerators I can completely understand that some angels take break.

He was probably referring to when people were saying that you couldn't make money on the consumer internet, thus not investing, thus leaving a lot of space to those who did. People now are mocking the valuations given to some comapanies, not saying that you can't make money with consumers on the internet... ;)

That makes sense!

Makes sense, but in that case, what is the word "excesses" doing in that sentence? I think somebody miss-transcribed the interview tape.

It makes a lot of logical sense - the demand for startups is higher than the supply, and that's driving costs up. Better to buy low and sell high than buy high and hope for higher.

I think we're only in a Facebook-fueled Social Network bubble. While at the same time, we are only at the beginning of genuine technology boom. Mobile and cloud computing tech isn't going to go away like a fad.

I agree but, like last time, the social crash will ripple through the real businesses too.

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