Editor’s Note: Alexander Haislip is a marketing executive with cloud-based server automation startup ScaleXtreme and the author of Essentials of Venture Capital. Follow him on Twitter @ahaislip. Congratulations to Facebook for going public. Congratulations to the employees that are now millionaires. Congratulations to the founders who are now billionaires. Congratulations to the bankers, lawyers and investors who have added to their already considerable wealth. You’ve grasped the brass ring we’re all reaching for. Yet the company that’s been created isn’t what I want from Silicon Valley. Let’s lay aside for a minute the foibles of the founders: Mark Zuckerberg’s hacking Harvard’s servers and the email accounts of journalists, his decision to “fuck” the Winklevii “in the ear” and Eduardo Saverin’s ridiculous tax dodge. Let’s forget ... Continue reading →
The leaders of the G8 conference, assembled this weekend at Camp David, Maryland, took a break to watch the riveting overtime shootout of the Chelsea vs. Bayern Munich Champions League soccer final today. (Photo credit: Pete Souza | White House) Continue reading →
To help make sense of the Facebook IPO, we caught up with Steve Blank, a professor at Berkeley and Stanford and serial entrepreneur from Silicon Valley. This conversation has been edited and condensed.THOMPSON: What does the Facebook IPO mean for Silicon Valley?BLANK: I think it's the beginning of the end of the valley as we know it. Silicon Valley historically would invest in science, and technology, and, you know, actual silicon. If you were a good VC you could make $100 million. Now there's a new pattern created by two big ideas. First, for the first time ever, you have computer devices, mobile and tablet especially, in the hands of billions of people. Second is that we are moving all the social needs that we ... Continue reading →
