My Life in the Tech World

iPad 2 line Palo Alto, CA iPad 2 line goes around the block in Palo Alto.

A friend who was one of the early employees at Google told me there was a point when they had too many users, too much growth, and no money coming in. There was talk of shutting down the service. That seems odd now but in the immediate post internet bubble years investors were wary of companies without a clear path to money. Fast forward to today and there are companies such as Facebook with too many users, too much growth, and plenty of investment money coming in. Essentially, today's high fliers don't need to worry about cash and it  shows. Facebook in particular is a rather fat company compared with the pre-Adwords Google. Long term this is going to have an impact on these companies. It's not in their DNA to make money. Their users aren't deriving benefit from the company's money making activity. Early on Google learned to provide a valuable service that generates money so that the company could stay alive. Today, if you're looking for a product or serv...

A few friends of mine are in start up mode. They have ideas and are looking for money and or people to help them get things going. One of these friends asked me to pick him up for lunch from Sequoia Capital. He was visiting there looking for investors for his latest startup. SC is a venture capital firm with an office in a small wooded business complex in Menlo Park. It was raining heavily so I decided to wait in the lobby for him to complete his meetings. As I walked up I saw people through some windows in the complex. In one window there was a guy with metal disks waving them around demonstrating something to another man who sat silently watching. In another window, there was a guy running through what looked like a demonstration of a website. In the last window I saw a group of people reviewing a powerpoint. It occurred to me that in most cases there was one or more people asking for money and one or more people evaluating. I made my way into the lobby and tal...