Innovation Toronto » nytimes

Economy Has Become a Drag on Silicon Valley

innovation2 — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 13:07:25 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — Housing prices in Silicon Valley remain defiantly high. New BMWs and Saabs cruise Highway 101. But for the first time there are signs that the current economic downturn is taking its toll on the country’s cradle of technology and innovation.

Job growth has slowed, start-up companies are hiring and spending more cautiously, and early-stage investors who nurture the start-ups with money and expertise are growing more frugal.

Most of the investors, entrepreneurs and innovators who build companies in the Valley do so with the hope of taking them public or selling them — the rainmaking opportunities that people here call exits. But with gloom pervading the financial markets and the business climate, the exits are hard to find.

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike

ron — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 21:49:33 +0000

IT’S a pickle of a paradox: As our knowledge and expertise increase, our creativity and ability to innovate tend to taper off. Why? Because the walls of the proverbial box in which we think are thickening along with our experience.

Igor Kopelnitsky

Andrew S. Grove, the co-founder of Intel, put it well in 2005 when he told an interviewer from Fortune, “When everybody knows that something is so, it means that nobody knows nothin’.” In other words, it becomes nearly impossible to look beyond what you know and think outside the box you’ve built around yourself.

V.C. Nation - A Post-Google Fraternity of Investors

ron — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 14:42:39 +0000

Librado Romero/The New York Times

“I had one of the best jobs in the world,” said Chris Sacca, who left Google. “But there is a world of opportunity.”

SAN FRANCISCO — Chris Sacca had a plum job as the Wi-Fi guru at Google. But with his stock options fully vested, he left the Internet search company this month for a new career as a venture capitalist.

Mr. Sacca, 32, joins a growing number of Google millionaires hoping to parlay their newfound wealth into even greater riches by bankrolling technology start-ups.

Andrea Zurek, a former manager for a Google ad system, left in October. She is considering an investment in a company started by another Google alumnus.