In Silicon Valley "The Craziness" Returns, But Does It Matter?
Michael Arrington of TechCrunch offers a surprisingly personal and wistful piece this morning about how Silicon Valley was more fun when it was less venture capital-fueled and PR-drenched. The good old days are now in the rear view, circa 2005. And then, he writes, “Somewhere in there the money started rolling in.”
Arrington’s legitimate fear is that with the focus on big press hits and eye-popping venture capital infusions, there will be less time to genuinely appreciate, promote, and nurture true innovation, industry-changing ideas, and “beautiful products and genius developers.”
Arrington concludes: “It may be time for some of use to leave for a while and watch the craziness from the outside again. In a few years, things will be beautiful again. The big money will be slumbering away, and the marketing departments will be a distant memory.”
I lived in the midst of “the craziness” during the 1.0 web boom days of the late ’90s. I worked at a start-up in the Bay Area that boasted a real indoor batting cage, pool table, foos ball (Lords, I miss that thing terribly), air hockey, and ping pong. Later, I worked at a San Francisco start-up where lavish Friday night parties were the norm, where round after round of Lemon Drop shots – this being the “company drink” for reasons unknown – freely flowed for all those who would sip its salty-sweet flavors.
Now and throughout the “web 2.0″ era, I’ve lived and worked in Los Angeles, outside of the sphere of Silicon Valley. This perspective helps me to realize that while “the craziness” may be on the rise once again up north, innovation and focus on great products can now come from just about anywhere.
The “flattening” elements that Thomas Friedman describes in The World Is Flat allow small teams of entrepreneurs to build and run web products and services on the cheap, at a tiny fraction of the cost that it would have taken just 8-10 years ago. Office space is no longer a necessity, hardware and bandwidth costs have plummeted, and virtual communication has vastly improved. Open source code and cheap software packages now create an environment where good ideas can be effectively executed by passionate and dedicated entrepreneurs.
In other words, while the craziness may be back, there are new hordes of web entrepreneurs and developers who don’t need or even necessarily want any part of it.
Stan Schroeder of franticindustries (quickly becoming a must-read for this online media cultist) agrees, emphasizing that most people could care less about Silicon Valley culture. It all comes down to products and services that make life and work easier, more fun, more interesting, and so on. And Mark Evans smartly points out that Michael Arrington’s feelings are somewhat ironic considering that the web 2.0 wave helped bring him stardom, riches, and the position of being “one of the most influential people on the Web.”
Kara Swisher of All Things Digital sums up well by writing: “Today, the new companies, for the most part, are actually useful and much more disciplined and with much less lofty goals. While most are built to flip, they offer features that improve the experience on the Web for consumers and businesses and are filling in areas that need improvement. In fact, while there are some mildly laughable ideas, it is hard to find any on the level of the party that was 1999.”
