See this fun interview with the energetic early Web innovator Marc Andreesen. Andreesen is on the Facebook board, has his own social networking company called Ning, and is just launching a new venture fund. He talks about Kindles, iPhones, social nets, the theory of cascading innovation, and says we should create new “virtual banks” to get past the financial crisis.
Tech Killers
Michael Malone says Washington is killing Silicon Valley. Among the depressing metrics:
in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986.
Citing in particular an amazingly large array of new accounting rules, including but not limited to Sarbanes-Oxley, Malone gets the key problem:
From the beginning of this decade, the process of new company creation has been under assault by legislators and regulators. They treat it as if it is a natural phenomenon that can be manipulated and exploited, rather than the fragile creation of several generations of hard work, risk-taking and inventiveness.
