photo credit: Ross C.

SITTING on the porch at Finca Torrenova, his 800-acre retreat on this Mediterranean island, Martin Varsavsky ticks off the credentials of the group of Internet entrepreneurs finishing lunch at a nearby table.

“He has 40 million uniques, he has 50 million, and he has 8 million,” Mr. Varsavsky says, referring to the number of visitors to Web sites owned by his guests — many of whom are also business associates and have joined him for several days of brainstorming about the digital future.

These days, commercial victory on the Internet is all about scale, and Mr. Varsavsky, a 48-year-old from Argentina, can be forgiven for speaking longingly and in detail about his peers’ achievements. No stranger to success — he has had a tidy crop of new media and telecommunications hits since the 1990s — he is still struggling to bring his newest Internet venture to fruition.

Three years ago, aiming to create a global wireless network, he founded FON, a company based in Madrid that wants to unlock the potential power of the social Internet. FON’s gamble is that Internet users will share a portion of their wireless connection with strangers in exchange for access to wireless hotspots controlled by others.

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Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman wrote a blog post a couple of days ago comparing Silicon Valley unfavorably to the Seattle tech scene.

I spend a lot of time in both places, and I think some of his observations are correct (people here compete to the death, people there go hiking). But even though I occasionally criticize Silicon Valley myself, I think there are some things that are dead wrong in his analysis. If you want a well balanced life, Silicon Valley is not for you. But if you want to change the world and are willing to do absolutely anything to achieve your dreams, there is no better place to be than here.

Thor Swift for The New York Times

Giriraj Vengurlekar, an engineer who lives in Sunnyvale, says the cricket pitch can be something of an informal job market

ALVISO, Calif. — Palo Alto Networks is a high-tech start-up with ample financing and ambitious plans. But despite its name, the company has no offices in Palo Alto, Silicon Valley’s unofficial capital.

Instead, it is based about a dozen miles farther south, on the outskirts of San Jose, in Alviso. The company is developing technology to protect computer networks from hackers and misuse, so it chose to be where engineers with networking expertise are clustered: around big companies in the field like Cisco and Juniper Networks.

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Generally speaking, experience counts for something. So you’d expect entrepreneurs who’ve been through the ups and downs of a tech startup to have an advantage over the newcomers. Or at least have an equal chance at success. But in fact the opposite may be true. A number of venture capitalists I’ve spoken with have said that too many “old guard” entrepreneurs are not being bold enough in their business decisions, and it’s hurting their startups.

The first VC to bring this up to me was CRV’s Saar Gur at a recent conference. Since then I’ve brought it up with a number of other VCs. Across the board they agree - many entrepreneurs from the first bubble are overly cautious, and hurting their businesses.

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