NY_Entrepreneur

"Without Paul Allen Microsoft as we know it would not have existed because he named Microsoft Microsoft."

So he named the company? Now you are being totally silly and showing that you are determined to fight with me for just silly reasons.

You are the one being 'personal'. You just don't want the argument made that sole founders can be a good bet and just want to stay with the PG and VC herd that cofounders are crucial, say, for naming the company and cut me down for not joining your herd.

Jobs was a successful sole founder at Next, Pixar, and his return to Apple. The only role from Woz and Jobs's first time at Apple was just cash, not Woz or a 'cofounder'. You are straining to deny that Jobs was successful in his last three gigs as a sole founder.

Gates? He had to refound the company after the success of MS/DOS and make Windows, Windows Server, SQL Server, and Office all real. He did. Alone. While doing this, IBM was laughing at him. He knocked the socks off IBM, DB2, Lotus, WordPerfect, Sun, HP, and more.

Just look around you: Commonly cofounders and coleaders just suck. Big committees suck. Group decision making sucks. Take IBM, AT&T, GM, Sun, HP: In each case, the management suite and top management 'team' was awash in what was regarded as the best qualifications. Still, they all just sucked. The Navy knows better: On the bridge of a ship, there exactly one captain. Although one captain can be bad, two is usually worse.

Then you are ignoring the present for what is central at HN: IT startups, especially Web 2.0 startups. Elsewhere on this thread I've explained in good detail: A founder needs to understand his business; he needs to understand the software; the bottleneck in understanding the software is not the unique software of the company but just understanding the now huge software components available; that bottleneck can be passed by just one person at a time, essentially alone, or learning is not a spectator sport or a team sport; once a founder has passed this bottleneck, a cofounder becomes much less relevant than in the past. You can see this, if you want to.

The main issue here is sole founders or cofounders. The resolution is, net, having all the business between one pair of ears is a great advantage when it can be done, and now for a Web 2.0 startup it not only can be done but should be done. The 'team' of Michelangelo and anyone else would be nowhere nearly as good at painting the ceiling as just Michelangelo alone.

"would they have been able to without the support of the other half?" The evidence overwhelmingly, yes they would have been successful. You are correct that Gates, Jobs, and Buffett are not perfect examples of successful sole founders, but the question is, can a sole founder be successful? The 'rub' in this question is, can just one guy, alone, making all the decisions alone, do well? Then the examples of Gates, Jobs, and Buffett are quite relevant because each did great things essentially alone.

For Jobs, whatever might say about Woz and Jobs's first period at Apple, later Jobs did very well alone at Next, Pixar, and back at Apple. For those last three gigs, Woz was somewhere in the nickel seats. Yes, the success with Woz gave Jobs a lot of cash that was no doubt important for him in his last three gigs. So, then we say that Jobs is an example of a three time successful sole founder with cash. So, with cash a sole founder can work.

After the success of MS/DOS and Allen leaving Microsoft, Gates really had to reinvent, 'refound' the company. It is fair to say that he was a founder again. Yes, he was a founder with cash, but he was still acting essentially alone. Again, the issue is, can a sole founder do it alone, and that is what we are addressing. With the cash from MS/DOS, Gates did it alone. It's amazing what he did because he crushed IBM, Sun, Lotus, Netscape, DB2, and more.

For Buffett, no way should we count Ben Graham! He wrote a book and was a prof of Buffett at Columbia and possibly a friend. Graham had likely hundreds of students and millions of readers, but there was just one Berkshire. So, for Berkshire I don't credit Graham.

For Munger's role, that's just a judgment call, but my reading is that Buffett didn't much need him. Partly I draw that conclusion because it appears in recent years Buffett has been making his decisions essentially just alone.

Again, the main issue is, can a sole founder really get the work done or will he go off the deep end, for fast women, slow horses, cheap booze, wacko ideas, etc.? Well, Gates, Jobs, and Buffett didn't do any of these bad things.

There's another great example: Fred Smith at FedEx. I absolutely, positively guarantee you that there I know in fine detail just what the heck I'm talking about: FedEx was due almost entirely just to Smith, not Art Bass, Roger Frock, Mike Basch, ..., or me. Yes, it's true that Smith had a fortune from Southern Greyhound.

But with a fortune, it's easy, right? Tell that to Carly Fiorina, John Akers, Gil Amelio, Pat Dunn, etc.

Sure, Woz helped get Apple started. Then with that start, Jobs had cash that helped him at Next and Pixar and back at Apple where he worked for $1 a year. So, Jobs was really the 'founder' of the success at Next, Pixar, and the Apple we know today. Your point is just that the early success at Apple gave Jobs cash. With cash, Jobs was a wildly successful sole founder at Next, Pixar, and his return to Apple where the cash was relevant but not the early Apple or Woz.

The issue is, can a sole founder be successful? The evidence from Jobs at Next, Pixar, and Apple upon his return is, with cash, yes. So, just for the people involved, Jobs is a great example of a successful sole founder in his last three gigs.

You are bending over backwards to refuse to see this. Why don't you go on and say that the iPod was due to his mother while you are at it?

Again, yet again, so that even you might be able to get it, is Jobs, with some cash, was three times a successful sole founder. That's the issue: A sole founder, and three times he was. Even you can get that now.

Sure. Still, what I said is on target: Gates, Jobs, etc. did the big, huge growth just from their own brains. There's no good reason to believe that they could not have done all of the success, including the first days, essentially alone also.

Really, for the "early stages of a business", that is JUST what Jobs faced at Next, Pixar, and back at Apple. What he and Woz did for the Apple II was nearly irrelevant except it did leave Jobs with the cash from his sale of all his Apple stock except one shart. So, we're not talking the value of a cofounder but the value of a founder with cash!

And for Gates, as MS/DOS took off, Microsoft was just awash in cash. About then, Allen left. So, the real building of Microsoft was due to Gates and cash. It's not the least bit clear that Gates ever really needed Allen as a cofounder. Similarly for Jobs and Woz.

You are just flatly refusing to pay any informed attention at all to history or to read what the heck I actually wrote.

Take Gates: When Allen was still around, Microsoft was a still a small company IBM was still laughing at. Then Allen left. Gates, it was JUST Gates, went on to build Windows 3, Office, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, IE, Windows Server, SQL Server, Windows XP, and more. Gates grew his fortune from a few hundred million dollars to $50 billion or so. That growth was due to Gates. Period. And that was the significant growth that blew the doors off IBM, Sun, HP, Lotus, etc. Got it now?

For Jobs, you are really working to be brain-dead: What Woz and Jobs did with the Apple II, etc. is nearly irrelevant to what Jobs did at Next, Pixar, and after his return to Apple. Apple became for a while the most valuable company in the world due to what Jobs did, Jobs, JUST Jobs, with Woz watching from the nickel seats. Sculley? Amelio? They just helped show how bright Jobs was.

For your "would have never made it to where they got", we have no way to know that.

You are illustrating a huge point that I did make: People like to fight. Even over something really obvious, people like to fight. If you and I were cofounders, then no matter what I did and no matter what success the company was having, you'd be fighting me every way you could think of, fighting, fighting, fighting, for no good reason except you just want to be fighting. There's no way you could be effective.

Allen and Woz both left early on. Allen was in a plane wreck and/or got cancer or some such? Woz was gone before Jobs was at Next, Pixar, or back at Apple. I'm sure Jobs had a mother, also, but as I wrote, and is clearly the case, Apple, that is, the currently successful company, was a one man show from Jobs. While Munger is a bright guy, my reading is as I wrote it: Berkshire is a Buffett show.

Even if the roulette ball drops into the slot 00, the play was still a "big risk", and so was, under the circumstances, insisting on a cofounder. That is, given how much Drew had already done, a cofounder had to be mostly just downside risk. The 'mitigation' had to be minimal.

Or, Drew's left hand doesn't fight with his right hand, but cofounders can easily fight.

If a cofounder is really needed, then so be it. But a cofounder is always risky, and a single founder who has already done well starting the business has a big advantage just because his left hand won't fight with his right hand.

Now a single founder can do much more than in past years, even just five years ago.

And here's a big point: always in a startup very much want the CEO to 'understand his business'. In an IT software startup, that includes understanding the software. But software has now changed: E.g., with .NET, nearly everything needed in commercial computing, and a larger fraction of Web site construction, is already in the .NET classes. So, the work is just writing a little 'glue' code between the uses of the classes. So, the coding goes VERY quickly. But what doesn't go quickly is understanding the classes because need about 10 books each of 500-1000 pages and, even for just a Web site, about 3000 Web pages of documentation from MSDN. And, this understanding of .NET is just 'overhead' that have to pay just once per programming task solved with a .NET class actually understand well. So, to 'know his business', a CEO needs to know the relevant parts of, say, .NET. A cofounder can't help here. And once the CEO does have that .NET knowledge, there can be some serious question if a cofounder can add much. Just what the Linux world has in place of .NET I don't know, but it can't be both small and effective.

There is other evidence: Look up and down Main Street at the successful businesses that have been started there. Typically there's only one person who is the real 'founder'. Look at research: Bright ideas come first to just one person at a time. Period. Microsoft: A Bill Gates show. Apple: A Steve Jobs show. Berkshire: A Warren Buffett show. Renaissance: A James Simons show. Continue with the one man shows of Kolmogorov, von Neumann, Knuth, etc. and in music Heifetz, Rostropovich, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, etc.

It's tough enough to find a Michelangelo to paint the ceiling. Getting him a 'copainter' who would actually help would be impossible. As you add people to a team, the team regresses to the mean where you don't want to be. And, did I mention fights? Sorry 'bout that.

On 'the rules':

Again, just a fast look at VC finances shows that VC just MUST hit 'home runs' such as Dropbox or better.

Then just a fast look at the history of home runs shows that get only a few each decade. And just a fast look at those home runs shows that a significant pattern is super-tough to see. And, any such pattern has only a few examples because the larger 'circumstances' change so much from one decade to another. E.g., it used to be that a trillion bytes was a REALLY large chunk of hard disk space, but now it's not so large just as main memory.

So, since have to be looking for such home runs under such circumstances, what good 'rules' can be formulated? Remember, we're looking for home runs and not trying to find a description of a VCs average arriving e-mail pitch. Or we're looking for some tiny number of golden needles in in a huge pile of hay so that statements about some average about the hay are just irrelevant.

Well, one could guess, 'the first rule of VC is that there are no rules', but, actually, that is too strong.

But not good is the rule against 'single founders'. Why? With the larger circumstances today, a single founder has some big advantages. I will let readers fill in some of the advantages based on current circumstances just as an exercise!

Next, for 'the rules', there still are some that can apply to some of the startup candidates, One collection of such candidates is based on startups where the core 'secret sauce' is especially powerful and can be evaluated just technically. For a biomedical analogy, consider a safe, effective, cheap single pill cure for any cancer: Then just evaluate the pill and f'get about the founder because if do have the pill and if he did invent it, then f'get everything else about him! He invented the pill, for god's sake! Or, we know you are plenty smart, but could you have invented that pill? So, if he's smarter than you, then you've just gotta think that he's plenty smart. I mean, given that he invented that pill, what are the chances he's a doofus? Or, to be quite specific, even worst case, just what issues of 'business acumen' couldn't be solved by hiring him a COO, CFO, SVP Operations, SVP HR? And there's no good reason to suspect such a worst case or even a bad case. Or, did I mention, the guy invented the pill?

For meaningful rules to apply to all IT startup candidates, that seems to be asking too much.

The simple answer that will fit on the back of the usual 3 x 5" card of VC rules that even a VC can understand is, in looking for the crucial home runs, the first rule is there are no rules.

"They look at patterns. This is what VC does."

Yup, again, they don't have effective criteria.

"You have a content business." Wrong. You are misinformed.

"Also, if you conduct yourself in person like you do here that is probably another issue."

What I do here is fine. What PG wrote is a bit far from what VCs do, and I called BS.

Generally people want to suck up to the VCs and get all excited when they 'receive a round of funding'. No, what they did was just sell a huge chunk of their business and put themselves under the control of a VC Board under some really bad terms. I won't suck up to VCs.

Entrepreneurs, including in IT, and on HN, need simply to observe that the US, border to border, is just awash in entrepreneurs who start successful businesses on Main Street with no contact with VCs. The people I've seen in yacht clubs were mostly successful on Main Street, and there wasn't a penny of VC equity in sight.

My mention of a pizza shop is dead on the center of the target: Now a Web site serving a few dozen Web pages a second takes much less in capital equipment to get started than a pizza shop. And the Web site has some advantages, e.g., once the site is up, mostly just lean back and let the servers do the work, 24 x 7, and that beats the heck out of all the food handling, kitchen cleaning, floor washing, worker supervising, customer interactions, etc. at a pizza shop.

I and likely nearly all of us have neighbors in big truck, little truck businesses, fast food, gas stations, rental property, various trades, etc. They make it, buy houses and new cars, get their kids through college, etc. without a big failure rate and without VC. A Web site can be a better business, still.

Since on average, as reported by Mark Suster, VCs are not making much if any money, I have more respect as businessmen for a guy running a pizza shop, especially a guy running several, than I do for VCs.

For technical expertise, maybe in all the US a dozen IT VCs have some significant technical qualifications, and otherwise they would be at best just dead weight in an IT startup. So I can't respect VCs technically either. VCs commonly have a LOT of trouble handling their e-mail; NOT good. VCs commonly want others, lawyers, CEOs, bankers, etc., to 'filter' entrepreneurs for them; NOT good. VCs commonly assert that they have wide 'networks' -- mostly not among well qualified technical people! Nearly none of the VCs are anything like the people I respected in math and physics in school or like the people I respected, say, at Yorktown Heights.

VCs need entrepreneurs more than entrepreneurs need VCs. So, I'm not here to suck up to VCs. For what PG wrote, I call BS. So be it. There's nothing wrong with that. HN is for 'hackers' who should not be sucking up to VCs.

You keep assuming that my concern here is my business. It's NOT. My concern was just being clear on just what the heck VCs do.

VCs are welcome to do what they want. While I have very little respect for all but a tiny fraction of VCs, I am not angry at any of them although I believe that here PG was not accurate.

VCs and my business are close to mutually irrelevant.

From all I can tell, my business is doing well, but, yes, I will be happier when I am getting $300 K+ a month in revenue.

"Crossfire", what VCs do in general or nearly always, etc. are getting to be nearly irrelevant for everyone: Just a short look at the finances of a VC and see that VCs need 'home runs'. All the rest is low grade work or just a waste of time, effort, and money. But there are only a few 'home runs' each decade in all IT VC in the US. So, 99 44/100% of what VCs 'do' is irrelevant, for all concerned. In particular, what is 'usual' is irrelevant. And for the VCs, 'patterns' are irrelevant.

The major failing of VCs is that they do not have effective criteria to select the 100 - (99 44/100) of interest, or even the candidates. So, about all they can do is follow the herd of the 'usual', draw their 2%, and hope a home run comes out of the blue. That's the key reason on average they are not making much if any money.

That lack of effective criteria is in wildly strong contrast with essentially everything in serious applications of science, in engineering, and in technology outside of VCs.

My criteria that get me to invest my effort are nothing like those of the VCs, usual or otherwise. On this point, I'm standing on solid ground, and the VCs are standing in a swamp.

It looks like Darwin will have the last word.

"You seem angry."

The reply by tptacek discarded the point I was trying to make and claimed that I was just complaining because, according to an uninformed claim of tptacek, I was having trouble raising equity funding. The goal of tptacek was to try to gain upper status via an insult. That was a personal attack for no good reason, and I was angry at tptacek. Otherwise, I'm not angry at VCs.

For PG's post, it seemed to be deliberately a bit far away from what VCs do. It's frustrating to see such from the other side of the table.

"Traction isn't necessarily the same as revenue." Well, one form of 'traction' is a lot of users, and in some cases can have that long before any revenue. Examples include the early months of YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. So, they had a lot of 'unique eyeballs' per month, and the assumption was that there should be a way, somehow, to 'monitize' that. Maybe. Usually.

In my case, a lot of eyeballs mean a lot of Web pages served and, for my Web pages, a lot of ads displayed. Then a lot of eyeballs mean a lot of revenue and, in my case, nearly all that revenue pre-tax earnings. Or, yes, I thought of 'monitization' up front. My most important Web pages have been carefully designed to have a banner ad of 720 x 90 pixels across the top and some number of ads 300 x 250 pixels down the right side. So in my case, 'traction' and 'revenue' go together.

"PG's view of the world isn't a universal rule." Yes, that is a weak version of my main point.

Maybe some LPs have asked their GPs to fund only 'traction', but likely some VCs are still able to fund something off the back of a napkin if they really want to. Even if they could, to me that's a bit moot: VC funding or not, likely not, like anyone on Main Street, I still need to build a successful business. At one time, a shot of VC funding could have helped my project a little. But now I'm so close to going live that what VCs do is getting to be a bit irrelevant. I'm still in touch with some VCs in case my personal funding runs out, but my guess is that it won't. Lots of pizza shops get to earnings without VC funding, and my project should be able to, also.

It would be one heck of a super sandwich for Fred Wilson to do so! Maybe if the restaurant were right there on Union Square and did lunch deliveries in the area and had some fantastic sandwiches and pitched Fred after several beers!

So, net, my point is that PG's claim of "traction" is incomplete. That is, also needed is something in IT. Then we also have to conclude that being in IT is not enough, that what the IT 'business idea' is will also be important. Then we arrive at why I mentioned restaurants: PG omitted mention of the IT business idea. Sufficient? Heck no. Necessary? Likely nearly always. Should it be mentioned? Likely.

"nuh-uh, it's super hard to get funding".

I never suggested any such thing. But I WAS being critical: PG's description amounted to saying that VCs want to get on the plane only after it has already left the runway. Although I didn't say it, I suspect that, then, what PG is saying is not all that close to how VC funding works. I wasn't being critical about it being "super hard" to get funding but just about the apparent contradiction in what PG wrote.

The VCs can do what they want. As Mark Suster has illustrated with some graphs and data, over the past 10 years the VCs have been doing poorly, and about half the partners are 'unemployed' as VCs.

So, I can't 'look up' to the VCs as business experts. They have MBAs; pseudo-great, I've been an MBA prof. Some VCs have had some startup experience, maybe in 'biz dev'. Pseudo-great; I helped start one of the most successful VC funded companies in history. And as IT experts, I have to look down on nearly all of VCs (although YC is an exception) so far I'd need a Hubble telescope to tell them apart. I've taught computing in two research universities, published peer-reviewed original research in computer science, mathematical statistics, applied mathematics, and artificial intelligence, and helped ship two commercial products from Yorktown Heights.

Any way it goes, I have to build a successful business. So does every entrepreneur on Main Street who opens a pizza shop, auto body shop, grass mowing service, etc.

So, as you wrote, by the time I've built a successful business, say not an "unproven" business, I would be able to sell a fraction to a VC. Okay. Just why I'd want to do that escapes me.

Or, the day before I take a VC check I have a 'proven' business, say, half filling 15 Mbps upload bandwidth with revenue close to $300 K a month and own 100% of it. The day after I take a VC seed check, I have $100 K -- $500 K more cash in the bank, that is, revenue from 1-2 months, where it took me much longer than 2 months to get the seed check, own none of my company, have to get my fraction of 'my' company back on a four year 'vesting' schedule, and can be fired by the Board at any time. Bummer.

My point is not that it's tough to get VC funding. Indeed, I MUST build a successful business, VC funding or bootstrapped. It's plenty clear, from what PG wrote and more, that once I've built a successful business, say, $300 K a month in revenue growing quickly, then I could get a VC check. And PG is saying that much before then, I can't get a VC check. Okay. Thems are the rules. Good to know the rules.

So, what was my point? Just that the rules as PG wrote them don't make much sense. I doubt that what he wrote is very close to the truth.

As an entrepreneur, I have to evaluate the potential of my business early on. Nowhere did PG mention that a VC will review that evaluation. Here he is mostly correct: One could count with shoes on all the VCs in the country who could evaluate or even direct the evaluation of the crucial, core 'secret sauce' in an IT business plan.

People have mentioned a similar point before: If VCs want to wait until there is significant traction growing quickly, now they risk waiting too long. That is, it used to be that, to get the traction, the company needed funding to write the software. Surprise: At least from Microsoft, once one understands the relevant parts of .NET, essentially all the code for a Web site, indeed, for much of commercial software, is already written, and all that's needed it a little, simple glue to join the .NET code.

Next, surprise: If usage grows, then can call up, say, Tiger Direct, get some parts, and plug together one heck of a 64 bit server for less than $1000. We're talking what, 4 AMD cores at 3.0 GHz for $100? A motherboard for $100? Main memory at $10 per GB? 2 TB hard drives for $100 each? A high end Antec power supply for $100? A case for $50? Some fans for $2 or so each? What'd I leave out?

Next, surprise: If usage is significant, just $1 CPM will throw off enough cash to buy servers enough to double capacity in less than two weeks. So, that's exponential growth. Bandwidth used to be really expensive. Surprise: Now where I live $15 Mbps upload with a static IP address costs $65 a month, and CAN use it for a Web site.

Fred Wilson has written on his blog that these changes are good for VCs. Maybe. And I continue to see the major successes taking VC funding and don't have a good list of successful bootstrapped companies.

Still, from what PG wrote, basically I've got to have, say, $300 K a month in revenue, growing quickly, to qualify for a Series A. But, in my case, that's just me and my team, two of whom have four legs, long tails, and long whiskers, and myself and I and a server at my left knee in my living room. For the server, I have one in a box in the next room. I also have an offer of a loan of one with 32 cores and 2 TB of main memory -- that used to be a lot of disk; now it's main memory! BELEIVE me, a 32 core server could send well over 35 pages a second from my Web site software! For the Microsoft software, their BizSpark program will let me, or essentially any IT startup, have the copies of Windows Server and SQL Server for free for a while.

Again, I'm not complaining that getting a VC check is too hard. Indeed, again, I need to build a successful business, say, $300 K a month growing quickly by myself. And, apparently PG would agree that with such a business I could get a VC check. Okay. But why then would I want to take a VC check?

Net, if I can ramp up to $300 K a month in revenue, I won't need a VC check. If I can't, I can't get a VC check. So, either way, there's no VC check. So, my point is, with PGs description, of what use are the VCs? Understand now?

"an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model"

I've read that some dozens of times from Blank.

Sounds like a guy opening a pizza shop knows better what he's doing than the IT startups Blank is talking about!

Not all IT startups have to be less well directed than a pizza shop! Bluntly, for a well planned startup, I conclude that Blank is nearly always wrong.

I helped start a company, now world famous. In my offer letter I was promised stock. Later the COB said that the amount would be $500,000. I never got the stock. That stock would be worth about $500 million now. Yup, I missed out. But I did get some startup experience. Got'a tell you, what Blank said didn't describe what we were doing at all. We always knew JUST what our business model was, and we were correct from the beginning to the present. It wasn't tough to know. Sometimes Blank is seriously wrong.

"You've bootstrapped your company." From what PG wrote, sounds like I don't have much choice: No matter what "more" it takes, I have to have it done before a VC will write a check. But, then, as you said, I will already have "bootstrapped" my company.

"I imagine you'll find that you need a lot more than a static IP address and 15 Mbps upload bandwidth to get there though." Sure. The point about the static IP address and the 15 Mbps upload bandwidth was just to illustrate that by the time I've got the "more" done and am ready to go live, we're not talking bucks big enough to eat up an average Series A. Instead we're talking much less cash that it would take to keep a new pizza shop going for the first week.

My point isn't how much an entrepreneur needs to do. My point is that by the time the entrepreneur has gone live, gotten significant traction, and has the traction going, and, thus, qualified for VC funding, if he can half fill 15 Mbps upload bandwidth, then he won't want to take VC money.

Put more simply, PG is saying that the VCs want to get on the plane after it has already left the ground. Okay by me. I'm just trying to understand the rules of the game.

I didn't mention it, but my guess is that the severe rules PG is describing have been 'suggested' by the LPs.

I don't quite 'get it': So, "Could you expand on your answer a little, please".

You seem to be saying that the key is "traction", significant and growing rapidly.

Then it sounds like someone who was just featured on the TV show 'Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives" and has significant 'traction' growing rapidly would get a VC investment?

Or so could someone who opened a pizza shop in a hot, new shopping mall.

So, it sounds like nothing about the core technology, Buffett 'moat', potential business size, or business planning is relevant?

Then, suppose the business is a new Web site. Suppose the founder gets from his ISP a static IP address and 15 Mbps upload bandwidth. Suppose his largest Web page can be sent for less than 200,000 bits. Suppose he half fills his bandwidth 24 x 7 for

     ( 15 * 10**6 ) / ( 2 * 200,000 ) = 37.5

pages sent per second. Suppose he sends three ads per page and gets $1 per thousand ads displayed (CPM). Then his revenue would be greater than

     1 * 3 * 37.5 * 3600 * 24 * 30 / 1000 = 291,600

dollars a month. Now just why would he accept equity funding?

Net, it sounds like, for an entrepreneur, when equity funding might help, his project is 'too early', and, by the time the funding is available, the VCs are too late.

So, it sounds like VC funding is for where (A) the business has suddenly encountered some problem and needs cash fast or (B) the founder wants to take some cash off the table and not for usual business formation.

Then back to the restaurant: All across the US, restaurants and Main Street businesses get built without VC funding, and commonly those businesses need much more in capital equipment, ovens, site renovation, trucks, etc. than a Web site filling 15 Mbps upload bandwidth. So, if those businesses don't need VC funding, why do new Web sites?

Well, can back that down a little!

For C#, there are some advantages in using just Visual Basic .NET instead: I'm doing a startup and developing a Web site intended to be a serious business and am using Microsoft, .NET, etc. C#? Never touch the stuff! Instead I just use Visual Basic .NET. The keys are the Microsoft 'common language runtime' and .NET collection of classes, and VB has plenty of access to these although C# has more in some advanced respects. VB has easier syntax, that is, is not 'idiosyncratic' the way C# is borrowing from C/C++. So, VB is easier to learn and easier to read on the page. So, VB is easier for me, the founder and also for anyone I hire.

SQL Server stored procedures? Never touch the stuff! I like the idea of relational database via T-SQL. That's fine. For my work, T-SQL via essentially 'command lines' and/or ADO.NET is just fine, plenty powerful.

'Command lines'? Yes: Use the little program SQLCMD.EXE that comes with SQL Server. So, if want some DB operation, just type the T-SQL commands into a simple text file and give it to SQLCMD.EXE. E.g., can do queries to get data for 'reports' of wide variety. SQLCMD.EXE is not part of the UI but can be just fine for a lot of the rest want from DB.

I don't even like the idea of a stored procedure because it 'distributes' the source code of the software logic in a clumsy way. ADO.NET and T-SQL are so powerful that there's s a good chance won't actually need stored procedures. If someday do need a stored procedure, then maybe download one or have a friend write one for you. Or learn a little about stored procedures and then write one.

To get a good start on the programming, get the relatively well written

Jim Buyens, 'Web Database Development, Step by Step: .NET Edition', ISBN 0-7356-1637-X, Microsoft Press, Redmond, Washington, 2002.

Then get copies of the standard Microsoft Press books on VB, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, and SQL Server. Then learn how to use the several thousand Web pages of .NET documentation at MSDN. Here's what I do: For some topic, say, class System.Uri, I start with what I have and/or a Google search. When I find a Web page I like, then I have my favorite Web browser save it. I save it in a file system directory I have on my development computer. So far I have four such directories, one for each of Windows, VB, ASP.NET, and SQL Server. In total I have about 3000 such Web pages. For the file names used for saving a Web page, I have a little macro that assigns those just as MSDNxxx.HTM where the xxx is the next unused sequence number. In each directory I have a table of contents file that acts like an 'index' and collection of 'abstracts': So for each file MSDNxxx.HTM, I have in the TOC the full tree name ending with MSDNxxx.HTM, the URL of the page at MSDN, the title of the page, the first paragraph or so of the page, and maybe some additional notes.

Eventually you will see how MSDN is organized: In .NET there are 'namespaces'. Typically for each there is a nice few Web pages of overview discussion. Those are good to read. Those overview pages have links to more details, often with more overviews, some tutorials, and some pages "How to: ...", usually quite practical with code samples. Then there are links for each .NET class. In the page for the class there are links to pages for the class constructors, methods, and properties. For some of the classes, e.g., STRING, it can take maybe a few dozen MSDN pages to document all of it.

For typing, I just use my favorite text editor. So I use it to maintain and search the TOC files and also to enter source code. No, I won't touch Visual Studio. The text editor I use is KEdit, and it is my most important tool. So far I have found that KEdit is just fine for developing .NET software. For running the VB compiler, I use either a command line script or use the way ASP.NET works in development (which is excellent). For a scripting language, I just use the old ObjectRexx from IBM, available for download for free. ObjectRexx is both elegant and serious.

I've written software, especially scientific and engineering, for decades in old Basic, assembler, Algol, Fortran, PL/I, C, etc. There read a little documentation and write nearly all of own 'logic'. Developing a Web site with .NET is quite different: In simple terms, .NET has a class for darned near everything so far found of significant general usefulness in commercial software development, especially for Web apps. So, .NET is enormous, a major event in computing.

So, for developing a Web app, heavily what you do, at least the first time, is read a lot and type a little. Your code is mostly just really simple 'glue' code between calls to .NET methods.

So in my code, to me, one of the crucial issues is just what the heck does the .NET class, method, or property do? For the answer, just ahead of each significantly obsure usage of .NET, I in put in comments with the tree names of the relevant files MSDNxxx.HTM. Then one keystroke in my editor will display the Web page of the MSDNxxx.HTM file. To me, a big part of the really meaningful asset of my code is just the code that works together with the links to the MSDN documentation. It's that documentation, readily available right there in my code, that lets me 'desk check' and understand what the code does.

So far, it seems to me that what Microsoft has done with .NET, 'managed code', MSDN, etc. is just terrific stuff, a real step forward in computing.

My experience is that you will have questions. Then you can often get answers on fora and blogs via a Google search. In particular, MS runs several fora where MS experts hang out and provide sometimes some quite good answers. I've gotten maybe a dozen really good answers on some knotty questions. You need to accumulate a collection of such helpful fora.

For more, it's possible to pay MS and get more. Once you have serious revenue, to save time, likely you should just pick up a phone and call an appropriate MS expert and have them just walk you through some 'task' as you take notes. Then the next time, just use your notes!

I believe that you will find that your most difficult issues are not in the programming but in 'system management and administration', e.g., for installation, configuration, backup, recovery, security, performance, reliability, of Windows Server, SQL Server, other MS servers, and the networks you use. For such work, once my business has significant revenue, I intend just to pickup the phone and call MS, Cisco, HP, etc.

You can do it. What you didn't get in a BS or MS in computer science, someone who did can give you a few lectures and get you nicely caught up on what you might need occasionally. But it's not easy getting good with several books, each 500-1000 pages, and a few thousand Web pages at MSDN.

One "pointer" would be how a graduate student proposed their Ph.D. dissertation project. There is a lot of variety here. The way I did it was (1) pick my own practical problem I brought to graduate school, (2) in my first summer use some of the best material from my first year of course work to do some original research to get a solution, (3) write up the solution as a 50 page manuscript. That became my 'dissertation proposal'. The key to the 'process' here was that the manuscript had its core content in theorems and proofs. So, there wasn't a lot of doubt.

Later I finished my Ph.D. just as outlined in my manuscript.

Here's another example: I was working for a small company near DC on some DoD problems. At one point we had to bid on a software project for a major DoD lab. Part of the work was to provide data for a simulation of effects of ocean waves. Some of the input was actual ocean wave data. So, the goal was to generate simulated data with the same 'power spectrum' as observed. I got the famous book by Blackman and Tukey on measurement of power spectra and discovered that what the DoD lab wanted was poorly formulated; they were asking for too much 'resolution' from the data they had.. So, following the book, I wrote some software to illustrate what could and could not be done. The software, my references to Blackman and Tukey, and a technical paper I wrote formed the solid core of our proposal. We got the contact. The software I had written actually was essentially what was needed in the final deliverable.

I was in an industrial research group working on monitoring the health and wellness of server farms and networks. I had some new ideas and wrote out the ideas, with theorems and proofs, in a paper. Then I wrote some prototype software. On both simulated and real data, my software worked just as the math in my paper said it would. I wrote a paper for publication, and it was published. What's in the paper is solid and likely and apparently remains the best way to detect 'zero day' problems in server farms and networks. And for the "process", it is possible to be quite sure about the 'efficacy' of the work just from the paper.

The DoD accepts and reviews proposals for technical projects and research of wide variety. There is DARPA, ONR, Army Research at Durham, and more.

There is also design and planning in most of engineering, say, for tall buildings, long bridges, new airplane engines, new airplanes, etc.

In all such documents, the most serious question is, will the project as proposed yield the desired results? In nearly all cases, this question is answered just in the project proposal just on paper. Why such a paper is taken seriously is that, put briefly, 'it all hangs together logically from beginning to end'. Often the core of this logical connection is some math or math physics. That "process" of writing a paper that 'hangs together' is heavily from academic research. With this process, done well, it actually is quite possible to be fairly sure of the project results just from the project proposal just on paper before the project begins. The batting average of the DoD on such work, e.g., GPS, ARPANet, adaptive beam forming in passive sonar, inertial navagation, ultra low frequency radio communications, the SR-71, spread spectrum radar, infrared missile guidance, radar, the proximity fuse, the A-bomh, the H-bomb, the ICBMs, is nearly 100% and, thus, totally knocks the socks off venture capital.

Does this "process" have a role in information technology venture capital? At present, essentially never. Should it? Definitely, yes. How? Not for all projects but for the best ones, that is, the 'home runs': For an outline at 40,000 feet up, the standard steps in hitting an home run in business are (1) Pick a good problem, (2) Find a good solution to that good problem. (3) Sell the solution.

Part of being a 'good' problem is that a good solution will be valuable. Part of a good solution is that it is much more valuable as a solution than anything else and is difficult to duplicate or equal.

To ease the "process", pick a problem where it is obvious that a good solution would be valuable. Then for the solution, present that as a technical project proposal, say, much as for the US DoD, where all the proposal hangs together logically from beginning to end, likely with some math theorems and proofs and some math physics, etc.

Math? Information technology is to provide information by manipulating available data. Those manipulations are necessarily mathematical, understood or not, powerful or not. For manipulations that are solid and powerful, proceed mathematically.

Alas, US venture capital is nearly totally unable either to evaluate such work or even to direct the evaluation of such work. US citizens can be very glad for US national security that the US DoD is evaluating projects as they are and nothing like how VCs evaluate projects. Indeed, one could count on one hand all the VCs with qualifications to be technical problem sponsors in the NSF, DARPA, or the rest of the DoD. The IT VCs are trying to work in technical fields but nearly all are, in two words, technically incompetent.

VCs have some VERY serious problems: Mark Suster has some graphs that show that on average over the past 10 years VC returns SUCK. Thus, a lot of venture partners won't be able to raise a new fund. Thus, a lot of venture partners will have to leave venture capital. And one of Suster's graphs shows just this: The 'unemployment' rate of VCs over the past 10 years has been, just from memory, something over 50%. For the VCs who still have jobs, their chances are no better.

My broad conclusion is that the VCs are without any doubt the biggest idiots in the room. They are nothing like the students I respected in mathematics and physics or in computing. One could count on two hands all the venture partners with significant technical backgrounds (in information technology). There is hardly a single VC in the country I would hire as COO, Chief Scientist, CTO, Chief Software Architect, software manager, software developer, server farm administrator, network administrator, new product designer, help desk staffer, etc.

Some VCs respond to 'cold, over the transom' e-mail messages, and some do not.

The VCs have a HUGE problem: They very much DO need 'home run hits' but have essentially nothing for good criteria for selecting such. Indeed, net, their view appears to be to go for 'base hits' with some 'face validity' according to some currently popular 'herd criteria', draw their 2%, and just let 'another Google' happen when and if it does.

If they get only 10% of their 'hits' from 'cold, over the transom' e-mail, then the reason might be not that the e-mail contacts are unpromising but just that the VCs have trouble (1) handling their e-mail (most do) and (2) actually evaluating a project based on just text in an e-mail message (most do).

In Silicon Valley the VCs have a special approach: They spend so much time in 'gossip' that they all learn about the same 'hot deals' at the same time, just from gossip.

Alas, the gossip is a very poor way to select home runs.

Here's part of the problem in selecting 'home runs': Look at the home runs, Apple, Twitter, GroupOn, Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Dell, Oracle, HP, Sun, Microsoft, Intel, etc. and now, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to find the 'pattern' in that list. The list is short, and the list covers so many decades that the circumstances have changed a LOT over the decades. So, each decade, before the circumstances have changed, really have only one to a few such home runs. So, simplistic patterns don't work.

But there is something that does work. It has a GREAT batting average, FAR better than the VCs. It's worked GREAT for 70 years now. It still works. It gave us little things like the Internet, GPS, Silicon Valley, radar, atomic power, microwave ovens, microslectronics, and much more. Right: What actually works is the project evaluation process of the US DoD. And that is done nearly ALL on paper, with essentially always some quite technical material.

That process, nearly all on paper, is how I evaluated and executed projects in some of the world's best industrial research, some leading edge projects in business, various projects for the US DoD, my Ph.D. dissertation in engineering, and more. It WORKS. In comparison, the VCs are blind men throwing darts in the dark.

Some of the best VCs actually do realize that their 'networks' do not "overlap" with those of the most promising entrepreneurs. In particular, the 'network' of Lerer Ventures looks like it totally sucks for promising successes. Indeed, the very most promising sources of good deals for Lerer Ventures would be from 'cold, over the transom' contacts from people it does NOT know. If Lerer Ventures knows and likes an entrepreneur and immediately likes their project, then they should NOT invest! That is, unless they want to start another Huffington Post!

"Single"? I was married for years and then she died. I'm not going to get married again.

"Unemployed"? I'm an entrepreneur, not an 'employee'. I've been an employee of several large organizations, all very well known. At one, it was a startup but now is very well known.

Big organizations mostly don't need to get the work done and, thus, usually don't. They mostly don't need to get the work done because the organization has so much momentum that it can get by for years mostly not getting much work done. Getting the work done is not valued. Actually, about the work, next to nothing is valued. Indeed, anyone who tries to do very much becomes a threat to the rest.

People make progress via 'goal subordination', e.g.. forming coalitions that agree to occupy the high end of the ship as the other end sinks.

Large business organizations in the US are dinosaurs on the way to extinction.

The only reasonably promising path to financial security in the US is money in the bank from profits from being an entrepreneur. In particular, it is better to have an electrician's license and be an electrician sole proprietor entrepreneur than to have a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and try to work for a large organization.

The big, huge opportunity is exploiting Moore's law, the Internet, cheap storage, the ocean of good infrastructure software, and more as a base to deliver valuable, new information to all the world.

On women, you can believe me now or encounter disasters and believe me later.

Broadly, in the more industrialized countries, the data is overwhelming: Women are grand disasters on the way to extinction. Literally. No doubt. Exactly. Period. E.g., at Wikipedia, read that currently, on average, each women in Finland is having just 1.5 children. Finland did well beating Sweden, the Soviets, and Germany but is losing out to their women. At 1.5 children per woman, Finland is rapidly on the way to extinction.

F'get about Finland: The number of children per woman in all the more industrialized countries is too low to keep up the population.

Net, the women are distracted from concentrating on having children and, thus, are on the way to extinction.

In the past, the women had plenty of children whether they really wanted to or not. Now they have some choices so don't have enough children not to be weak, sick, or dead limbs on the tree.

Beyond just children, on average the women are grand disasters at forming stable family units. The situation is very much as in the movie 'The Godfather, Part II' where Michael asks his mother if it is possible to lose one's family. His mother says, "You can never lose your family". Well, Michael's father Vito didn't have to worry about that, but Michael did have to worry about it and did lose his family. Michael said, "Times have changed". He was correct about one of the biggest issues in all of the more advanced countries.

So, Vito's wife had a walk-up, cold water flat, likely far too cold, in NYC, and near rags for clothes, and next to nothing else, had three sons and a daughter, and continued to play a solid role in the family for life. Michael's wife had the best luxuries in all of history, two children, aborted a third, and just HATED her husband and marriage and ran away from her marriage. BUMMER. And that has been the story USUALLY not just in that movie but all across the US and all the more developed countries for several decades now.

So, the women are going extinct. If anything is left, necessarily it will be women who are GOOD at being strong limbs on the tree, almost surely GOOD at being wives and mothers. Thus, in the more developed countries, humans are now in by far the fastest and largest change in the human gene pool of at least the last 40,000 years when, say, the genes of Western Europe split from those of Asia and the Americas.

So, it's both large business organizations and women that are going extinct in the US.

So, a man who wants financial security needs to be a successful entrepreneur. Then if he wants a strong family, he needs to make some very special efforts to 'guide' the situation, at least day by day, often hour by hour.

Right: Being an employee in a large organization sucks. And being a husband of the usual woman sucks.

'Feminism' is mostly just the ideology for an excuse for being a weak, sick, or dead limb on the tree. It's not new but goes way back, through women's movements for many decades and to Shakespeare's 'The Taming of the Shrew'. Now that ideology is on the way to being extinct.

So, young men: Avoid what is going extinct. Avoid being an employee in a large organization and be an entrepreneur instead. When forming a family, avoid any hint of 'feminism' and be very much in control, often hour by hour.

Got it.

Their Web site has no e-mail address for contacting them.

The e-mail address they used to publicize died.

When calling for an e-mail address, their phone recorder is full of static.

If leave a message asking for an e-mail address, they don't respond.

Their backgrounds are not very technical.

They seem to believe that they can make good money with 'spray and pray' with simple projects with routine software for simple purposes for Web sites close to old media. Maybe.

"If you can win in competition within your organization through putting down other people, your organization has bigger problems."

You say this as if it were rare or unexpected! If so, then you are missing the weight of what you said! Once a company, or nearly any organization, gets big and old, it's nearly standard that the organization becomes arrogant, inwardly directed, and process oriented, has big cases of middle management goal subordination, and has each person fighting with others down the hall instead of the competition outside the building. Or, people go to work, work their tails off, stay busy, busy, busy, put in long hours, come home dead tired and frustrated, and the organization accomplishes next to nothing because all the effort is lost in internal mud wrestling.

The solution mostly is not to 'find a new job' because nearly all organizations of any size are like this.

Yes, the solution is to start your own company.

This pair of observations is solid now because, really, big organizations in the US -- GE, AT&T, GM, and more -- are dying out due to new technology, small competitors, foreign competition, etc. The US is regressing to the mean of many old world economies of a lot of small companies with little role for big ones.

Once you reach some maturity and begin to understand people, being good 'socially' gets to be simple enough. F'get about the struggles in middle school, high school, and college! So: (1) Have money! If you don't, then JOB ONE is to make some! (2) Stand up straight and be confident! (3) Mostly expect only respect, not loyality or affection. (4) Work to understand the emotions, fears, frustrations, and aspirations of others and, then, don't rub them the wrong way.

For adult women, first on their list is your money: They want to know that you have money enough to support a family and, further, have the competence to make more such money.

For girls in high school, they want to see you as confident and, then, gentle with them, and then perceptive about their emotions. They want affection, often sex, praise, acceptance, approval, and validation of their worth as girls. By late high school and in college the young women move your money to the head of their list of what they want.

That's about it.

Sure, it's possible to write some really bad Web apps. E.g., at my bank, they keep changing their Web site so that once each few months I have to click and click and click to look for where they have moved the page to let me download the PDF of my bank statement. Their 'navigation' is NOT clear.

Yes, building a Web site can be as complicated as we please: I'm buiding one now, my first one, and I am surprised at how much there is to it. So far all the work is just routine, but in total there is a LOT to it. E.g., my main Web page where a user enters some data has 160,615 bytes of typing and may top 200,000 before the page is done. I see the page as 'simple', and I hope my users will, but not everything can be simple about 200,000 bytes of typing. Yes, at 50 characters per line, that would be 4000 lines or, at 50 lines per page, 80 pages printed out!

Still, compared with a 'native' application, in practice HTML heavily constrains what a programmer can do with a user interface. So, an HTML interface is constrained to be relatively simple.

My main point remains: In total, one billion Web users can use any of over 100 million Web sites right away. That's a BIGGIE.

In the Web site I'm developing, I'm going with Microsoft and Visual Basic .NET,.NET, ASP.NET, and ADO.NET. Yes, ASP.NET writes some client side JavaScript for me. Fine with me. But so far I have yet to write a single line of JavaScript and intend to keep it that way!

But if do a lot of client side programming in JavaScript or any more capable successor, then risk programmers having fewer constraints, user interfaces becoming more complicated or, just, unique to each Web site, ease of use of the Web for a billion users going into the toilet, and the Web growth being throttled.

For my Web site, the user interface is SIMPLE. Yes, for each little thing a user does, there is a 'post back' and a 'round trip' to my server. Sure, something native could be 'snappy'. But I'm taking the approach, KISS. And, sure, each round trip lets my Web site put up a different collection of ads! For my most complicated Web page, what my server sends is less than 200,000 bits, and that can go to a user and be displayed VERY quickly. So, my site can appear to be nicely responsive.

Some of what's going on deep inside my servers is complicated, but the user interface should be so simple that people who don't know English should be able to use an English language version of my site! I'm drooling over the fact that one billion Web users will find my site easy to use, if they want to use it!

Net, I recommend that we keep the HTML Web UI SIMPLE.

"Whether it runs in a browser or is an application isn't relevant to how easy something is to use."

Sure, in principle and often in practice can make a mess out of a Web app and can have something nicely simple in a native app.

But your "isn't relevant" is too strong for practice: Again, HTML is a big constraint on what the programmer can do, and this constraint, in practice, forces a lot of simplicity, i.e., ease of use or, if you wish, relatively 'uniform' techniques of use across millions of Web sites with the advantage of learn once, use thousands of times.

Also, your example of Notepad is relevant: Actually, as simple as Notepad is, the average Web app is still significantly easier to use if only because Notepad is nearly unique and there are over 100 million Web apps that, via the constraints of HTML, all work very much the same. So, one billion people can use over 100 million Web apps from learning how to use just a few of them, but nearly all those one billion users would have still more to learn just to use Notepad for the first time. Native apps are so unconstrained they are free to be highly idiosyncratic: Sure, maybe for an app as simple as Notepad the learning time is short, but Notepad is not like an HTML Web app and,thus, needs ADDITIONAL learning time, even if only 5 seconds. In the world of the Web, the 5 seconds learning time unique to one Web site is TOO MUCH.

Again, this uniformity and ease of use pushed hard by the simplicity of HTML is a BIGGIE for the current size and future growth of the Web, and more complexity in client side programming tools is a threat to such growth.

Jeff Jaffe, listen up!

Is Silicon Valley really a hot bed of startups? Let's see:

People do 'startups' border to border in the US, in communities tiny to huge. Those startups might be a pizza carryout, electrical engineering company, franchised fast food restaurant, white tablecloth restaurant, law firm, CPA tax firm, auto body shop, photo studio, boutique dress shop, Web site design and programming firm, big truck/little truck product supplier, etc. Yes, Silicon Valley has a high concentration per capita of venture funded information technology startups, but there are startups all over the US.

Do the venture funded information technology startups really need a very special environment to keep going?

Let's see: An auto body shop, white table cloth restaurant, or even a lawn mowing service need more expensive capital equipment than an information technology startup. E.g., just a lawn mower can cost $13,000, enough to buy parts enough to plug together 10 good servers. A Web design firm anywhere in the US, or the world, has nearly all the same software challenges as a venture funded social Web site in Silicon Valley.

Does Silicon Valley really have a big advantage on the best creative work?

Let's see: Let's look at some of the best creative work in, say, music: How did Stradivari and Guarnieri build their violins, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Paganini write for violin, Heifetz get started in violin all in really small communities where what they were doing was astoundingly rare and world class on an historic level? I mean, who the heck was Mozart going to go to for help on how to write interesting, novel harmony? Where was Bach going to learn about key modulations? Who gave Mozart the crucial help he needed to write his operas or Bach to write his organ pieces or his violin 'Chaconne'? No one.

Who helped Newton with optics, calculus, the law of gravity, and the second law of motion?

Who helped Watt with the steam engine?

The history of the best works in art, science, engineering, and technology is awash in people doing historic world class work in what in Silicon Valley would look like near total isolation.

So, (1) startups happen all over the US and (2) much of the best work in all of history happened in near isolation. So, Silicon Valley is not needed for either startups or good work.

There's another candidate reason for the high per capita concentration of venture funded information technology startups in Silicon Valley: On average and in nearly all cases, the venture partners have at best meager qualifications in anything technical yet have to justify their risky investments to their general partners and limited partners.

Their best justification is, may I have the envelope please? Thank you. Here is it: "Join the herd!" So, get a place on Sand Hill Road or nearby and do much like everyone else does. So, 'fit in'. Talk to each other a lot like gossip among middle school girls.

So, net, what Silicon Valley has a high concentration of is not really startups but just venture funded information technology startups, and the reason is not that Silicon Valley is an especially good place for the entrepreneurs to get the work done but just that the venture funding is concentrated there because the venture partners do not have the qualifications to evaluate projects on their own and, instead, get along by fitting in and joining the herd. Net, the concentration is due to the propensity of venture partners to form herds.

Once again I'm glad for US national security that the Silicon Valley venture partners are not DARPA, NSF, or NIH problem sponsors.

'Web apps' have had a fantastically valuable feature nearly never mentioned. If we make big changes in how a Web browser client interacts with a Web server, then we risk getting rid of this fantastically valuable feature and seriously hurting our Web apps and the growth of the Web.

I believe that if we don't recognize the fantastically valuable feature, then the rush for 'richer' 'user interfaces' (UIs) and 'better' 'user experiences' (UXs) will get rid of this fantastically valuable feature.

Yes, UI/UX are IMPORTANT. Okay, I accept that.

BUT here's the fantastically valuable feature we just MUST retain: I explain the feature with two examples.

First Example -- Microsoft Word

While I can't speak for anyone else, I work hard to avoid using Microsoft Word. Several times I've used it, learned its UI well enough to get my work done, and rushed to f'get about Word and its UI.

Instead, for my high quality word whacking, I use D. Knuth's TeX that I find MUCH easier to use. Why easier? The documentation is rock solid, a jewel of software documentation. The software has a 'conceptual model' well explained in the documentation; with this conceptual model, it is fairly easy to understand what is going on. What TeX does is actually quite reliable and predictable and as explained in the documentation. Word is DIFFERENT.

I hate the Word UI/UX. For me, for each significant new usage, the UX is sometimes yelling and screaming in frustration. When I want to do something new to me, there's no solid documentation and no good 'conceptual model' for how Word works. So, I don't really know how it works. So, when I want to do something, I go around on the screen and left click, right click, double left click, double right click on everything in sight and see what happens. Commonly I type in something, get it as I want it, and then for no reason Word just throws away what I did. After a dozen times of such efforts throwing my work against the wall of Word to see what will stick, I start screaming. I HATE Word and all of its intended UI/UX.

Maybe if I got and read the documentation for how to write macros for Word it would make more sense, but as far as I know I would have to pay for that documentation. Besides, did I mention, I HATE, deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise, Word?

My view is that it takes at least two weeks of full time work for someone to get good facility with Word.

Second Example -- 100 Million Web Sites and One Billion Users

As we all now know very well, there are something over 100 million Web sites on the Internet and about 1 billion users. And, nearly any user can use nearly any Web site in their language right away.

So, somehow Web apps save the two weeks of full time effort for each of 1 billion users for each of some hundreds of Web sites they might visit.

That is, HTML is SIMPLE, DIRT simple. Nearly all Web apps built with just dirt simple HTML have a fantastically valuable feature:

Nearly any one of 1 billion users can use the Web app right away.

The Web app UI/UX has this feature, and Word does not.

Why do Web apps have this feature? Because HTML is DIRT simple. Yes, commonly there is a round trip to the server for each little step in the user's work. Right. So, there's a minimum of subtle, dynamic, pop ups, pull-downs, roll-overs, drag and drops, hidden 'side effects', and big changes in the state of the user's work from small actions. Not much is hidden or mysterious. There is minimal need for documentation. The UI/UX is NOT 'rich' -- thankfully.

To layout a page, mostly use just tables and/or divisions and nothing more complicated. So, the screen presented to the user is relatively simple, easy to understand, and much the same from one Web site to another. E.g., the designers of Word may have spent some thousands of person-hours designing each little part of each screen. The resulting complexity is forbidding -- huge BUMMER. With just simple HTML, it's just not practical to implement such complexity -- THANKFULLY.

With just simple HTML, for what we could let a user do, about all we got was (1) to follow a link, click on an image, (2) click on a button, (3) click on some radio buttons, (4) type into a text box, (4) move text to/from the system clipboard, (6) use the key TAB to move the cursor to the next text box, (7) hit the key ENTER in a text box. SIMPLE. Over 100 million Web sites have the 'controls' links, buttons, text boxes, etc.; all of these controls work very much the same on all the sites -- TERRIFIC. When a user clicked on some button, say, "Submit" or hit the key ENTER, the data the user entered was sent to the server, and the server responded. SIMPLE. Any user with any browser can use nearly any Web app right away. FANTASTIC.

Now, if we work at it, say, with much more powerful client side programming tools, then we will be able to build Web apps with a 'rich' UI/UX. We can have dynamic this, subtle that, automatic these other things, asynchronous who knows what, guess and anticipate what the user wants and do it for them as a 'favor', drag and drop, overlays, full motion, and on and on.

We can have rivers of functionality that are subtle, bug ridden, undocumented, not obvious, and, at each site, unique on all of the Web. BUMMER. E.g., I'm still screaming bloody murder at the whole theme of 'icons' because those little images are not English or any natural language, can't be spelled, pronounced, or looked up in a dictionary, and are documented usually at best poorly. Sickening. I HATE 'icons'.

Then, sorry guys, in practice, nearly all Web apps will (1) be much more expensive to develop, (2) will have many more security problems, (3) will be much less compatible with all the common browsers, (4) will usually become a total pain in the neck to learn to use, and (5) will lose the fantastically valuable feature of ease of use, right away, for any of one billion users.

Here's the truth: The UI should be simple, stay simple, dirt simple. The work on the server side might be fantastically complicated, but for the user the concepts of what they want, what data they enter, and what data they get back should remain SIMPLE.

As it is, HTML is so simple it's tough to mess up the UI. With much more powerful client side software tools, it will be tough NOT to mess up the UI.

Be careful about what you wish for because you might get it.

At least be very aware and careful with the fantastically valuable feature of Web apps built with simple HTML.

You seem to be saying that "the best technical people", because they are so good technically, are, then, necessarily less good than others at "business/social skills".

It's an old myth used by people without technical expertise to put down technical people. The put down is quite general with a cute twist: The technical expert is painted as good ONLY at the technical topics and is poor at EVERYTHING else including even ordering lunch. It's just a put down to win in competition within the organization. The usual way to avoid such a put down is to 'fit in', 'go along', and 'don't stand out'.

BELIEVE me, becoming a technical expert does not somehow ruin a brain for other work.

It is true that some technical experts don't bother with 'social', etc., but the issue is desire and not ability.

For the changes the article is predicting, for at least 20 years there's not even as much as a weak little hoot of a tiny chance of the change happening to any significant extent.

It's an OLD story with a very well known outcome -- the change struggles, dies, and doesn't happen and people give up.

And the reasons are very well known:

(1) Downside Only.

Broadly in companies, people in middle management are evaluated very strictly on very specific criteria. Basically for a job description, a superior writes it and the subordinate is to DO IT.

The norms for nearly all the company and especially for middle line management, are rock solid that the job descriptions never require doing something, as in the article, creative to save the company.

So, no middle manager ever gets a negative mark for failing to do something creative, that likely no one in the company understands, to save the company. Doesn't happen.

A middle manager who sponsors a project that fails gets a really BIG black mark that can end his career. So, for sponsoring a creative project, there is a big downside.

Suppose the manager sponsors a creative project and it is successful, say, quite successful, even saves the company? What is the upside? Since usually the middle manager doesn't have an equity position in the company, there is little upside.

And if the project is seen as successful internally, then everyone else in management will feel threatened and will undercut, sabotage, gang up on, and otherwise destroy the career of the 'successful' manager.

Net, for a middle manager to sponsor a creative project has essentially only downside.

(2) Managing Creative Projects.

To do something 'creative', from the aspect of practical management within a large company, there are really only two approaches:

(A) The CEO sponsors such projects. However typically in a large company, the CEO is too busy to sponsor a project.

(B) The CEO sets up a 'creative division'. Such a division typically gets resentment and no cooperation from the rest of the company and, finally, gives up on helping the company and spends its time in make-work, junk-think, busy-work, nonsense projects. When the next CEO comes in, the group is axed.

(3) The Extant Business Model.

A large business has a successful 'business model'. Mostly what the company does is JUST execute that business model, that is, stay with their 'bird in the hand' and not go looking for more birds in the bush. Or finding good birds is difficult; they already have one good bird; so, they would rather nurture that bird than go on the difficult search for more good birds. To execute the business model does not require, in any very direct or accepted sense, doing something new and creative. So, net, creative projects are not welcome.

(4) Professionalism.

There is a role for creativity in the economy, but one important condition is a lot of highly respected professionalism of the creative workers. Such professionalism typically has some high formal education requirements, a strong professional society, professional peer-review, professional liability, and government licensing. Examples include law, medicine, and some fields of engineering. So far, 'creative software' does not qualify.

Without the professional respect, a creative worker is trying to paddle a small canoe up a tall waterfall.

Note: For law in companies, how do lawyers not get eviscerated by the rest of the middle management? One way is, there is a rule in the legal profession that any working lawyer must be supervised only by a lawyer. So, really, in companies, lawyers are insulted from the usual middle manager organizational struggles.

(5) How to Be Creative.

If someone has a great idea for something creative that will be valuable, then they should start a business. They should be the CEO of that business, the main source of creative ideas for that business, and the main sponsor of additional creative work for that business. The creative direction of the CEO becomes the 'business model' for that business.

Then the valuable results are provided to other businesses as products or services. If the 'creative' work can make money this way, then fine. Otherwise, net, f'get about it. Sorry 'bout that.

To some extent, the large companies change. So, something that starts off being creative and becomes quite successful can be taken up by the 'field' of the business as standard, accepted practice. A good example was using linear programming to manage an oil refinery. How? Each day at the refinery, you have supplies of crude oil available with an analysis of each supply. You also have the selling prices of the various possible products -- naphtha, gasoline, jet fuel, kerosene, motor oil, heating oil, etc. So, your mission, and you have to accept it, is to say how much of each crude supply to process and how much of each of the possible products to produce to make the greatest profit.

When this bit of 'optimization' first became possible, the gains were large enough that the work was accepted as part of the standard technology of operating an oil refinery. Indeed, the Chicago branch office of IBM was selling mainframe computers, at some millions of dollars each, for just this calculation.

Actually, however, it is still the case that much of the creative work is performed by specialized companies that supply their results to the refiners and not by the refiners themselves.

An "old story"? Right: The bones in the graveyard have tombstones reading applied statistics, management science, operations research, applied research, etc.

Net, a big company that might be 'saved' by some creative work in computing mostly won't worry because there is little chance there will be any competitor who will make any significant business progress from any such creative work. So, why bother? Usually the answer is, don't bother.

There is an example of how to make such creative projects work: Find a nice area and set up a research group. Fund the research group directly by the company and as approved directly by the CEO. Have the research group visit the operating groups and select problems to work on. The research group selects their own problems. The research group works on the problems on their own funding. Typically a project goes from two months to two years before it ends. When the research group believes that they have something valuable for an operating group, that group is contacted. The operating group decides whether to implement the project. If the project is implement, then the financial results are carefully tracked. For the first three years of implementation, half the financial gains are credited to the operating group and half to the research group. After the first three years, all the gains are credited to the operating group. With such accounting, typically only about one research project in 10 is successful in making money for the company, but the research group can return about $3 to the company for each $1 in the funding of the research group. When the research group goes for funding, the CEO always offers more money than the group wants, and the group always declines the extra money! That's one way to execute 'creativity' successfully in a company. It can help if all the general managers of the operating groups have Ph.D. degrees, say, in chemical engineering, and if the company is owned by the CEO.

What you wrote with:

"almost all of their time trying prevent a riot from breaking out"

is quite similar to what I wrote with:

"The best can hope for from a K-12 school is that it will do no harm.

"Find a school that has a nice 'social atmosphere' and otherwise is RELAXED, e.g., with as little homework as possible."

So we are at least partly agreeing.

What to do about a school with knife fights in the classrooms, drug deals in the halls, and pimping at lunch time is to get the hell out: Such a school fails on "do no harm" and "a nice 'social atmosphere'".

If just have to leave and can't afford a wealthy neighborhood, then pick a small town in a rural, farming area in one of the more northern states; there essentially any school will do no harm.

Also good, pick a college town. Even if sweep floors, flip burgers, wash pots, and act as a security guard, will be able to do a terrific job getting children ready for college and life.

My good news is that don't have to move to some neighborhood with all millionaires. Instead, quite sufficient is JUST "do no harm" and a 'social atmosphere'. Academically relaxed is also good.

This is a radical recommendation: For good work in actually learning for college and life, mostly don't depend on the school. Don't mostly depend on the school even if in one of the best school districts in the country or even are sending children to one of the best private schools.

Why? Again, yet again, to repeat, bluntly the K-12 teachers don't know enough to teach much of anything to be taken very seriously. The K-12 years are some of the very best years for learning, and it is a grand disaster that those years are turned over to the K-12 system and, thus, largely wasted.

Also implied but not stated was, get the heck into college level material ASAP. In the US, the good academic material starts in college and continues into graduate and professional school. K-12 is wildly different and, academically, is a really bad joke -- mostly can just skip it. For most parents who want good education for their children, this is radical but good advice.

With my advice, careful parents, and a one-room school house in a serious, rural farming community will totally knock the socks off ANYTHING in formal K-12 education.

For your:

"Also, it can be very hard to support real learning at home if you are a single parent working two or three jobs to make ends meet."

True.

So: (1) Young people, listen up: Work however hard is necessary to form stable marriages and, really, stable, larger families. Marriages and families are IMPORTANT. Again, listen up.

(2) Unless you want a series of disasters for the rest of your life, delay having children until you can form a stable marriage.

(3) In the home, set up a 'culture' of learning instead of TV, cars, fashion frocks, popularity competitions, cell phone gossip, pop culture, fast food, sports, wild parties, etc.

Then, get the children started and going on learning, largely independently, ASAP. Then the children can learn on their own time with minimal time from parents, so little that there still is a chance for a single parent.

But this matter of a 'culture' of learning is just CRUCIAL. If there is any doubt about the culture in your home, then disconnect the TV. Keep children away from 'pop culture'. Emphasize LEARNING and, then, curiosity.

Don't try to send them to a 'good' school, certainly not an 'academically good' school. Bluntly, the K-12 teachers don't know anything worth much serious study or effort.

The best can hope for from a K-12 school is that it will do no harm.

Find a school that has a nice 'social atmosphere' and otherwise is RELAXED, e.g., with as little homework as possible.

Then for the real learning, have your children do that at home -- evenings, weekends, summers, and/or school study hall.

What materials? Sure, academically by far the crown jewel is just math. So, get them through math to the college sophomore level ASAP. The next best subject is physics. So, get them through freshman physics based on calculus ASAP. How? Get the best texts (good used copies are FINE, especially for the math) and work through them. If need some help, ask some friends who know the material well and/or find an appropriate, helpful college prof. Or have one parent enroll in, say, a community college course and there learn enough to guide their children and be able to ask the prof questions.

After math and physics, emphasize writing, say, letters, notes, blogs, whatever.

Sure, get 'computer literacy' and also learn the basics of programming.

Then emphasize geography, history, and art history. For English literature, at least learn about the basics of 'drama' and 'formula fiction' and touch on the more famous works. For as many of the works as can, start by watching a movie of the work. For more in drama, understand how movie and TV dramas work.

Somewhere get some basic coverage of 'people and personality', especially about human emotions. E.g., lacking anything else, read E. Fromm, 'The Art of Loving'.

For more, have the child take some community college courses, e.g., biochemistry and biology.

For more, look at the International Baccalaureate program and pick and choose from that or, maybe, just go through the whole thing.

During the last 2-3 years of the 'high school' time, review what else, if anything, is required to do well on the SAT tests.

For more? Maybe learn piano?

Likely could study accounting and take the CPA exam. A CPA would be nice to have.

For more? Jump into college material at the junior level and keep going. Get through college ASAP and then go for graduate or professional school.

For K-12? Don't ask for much and mostly just circumvent it.

Ah, what a morality play -- secrecy, power, greed, collusion, dirty dealing, guilt, shame, etc.!

If HN can't outgrow the fascination with morality plays, then what hope is there for the rest of society and society as a whole?

We need a new Web site: VC_secret_confessions.com!