Check out this essay in the New Yorker about undecided voters. Money quote: To put them [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?” To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked. I mean, really, what’s to be confused...
Learn MoreAs we head into the maelstrom of another economic downturn, flacks and spinmeisters will be rushing out to tell the world why the bad times are actually good for their companies. I’m already hearing people deliver some version of this, including the one that while many companies are going to get crushed, this particular company won’t suffer, because they possess the magical Anti-Downturn Potion, or they’re living inside the protection of an Economic Distortion Field. Some go a step further and even say the downturn could be a wonderful opportunity. One example is the statement that MLP put out yesterday regarding Sun. Another was Max Levchin of Slide who told me (see my Newsweek column about it here) the hard times might help his company because some of his competitors will go out of business. (Funny thing about that same Newsweek column was that Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, was quoted saying that his company was “prerevenue” but would do just fine during a downturn, although for others “it’s going to be painful. There’s going to be lots of fallout.” Days later Dorsey was ousted from Twitter. I don’t think that’s the kind of painful fallout he was talking about. True, some companies gain share during downturns. But most don’t....
Learn MoreOther ticker symbols considered included WTF, OOPS and OUCH. In case you haven’t heard, My Little Pony announced yesterday that they’re going to lose buckets of money and take some huge charges related to some acquisitions. See their press release here. Of course the villain in all this is the economy. Not My Little Pony. Nope, he’s been doing a great job. Like paying $4.1 billion for StorageTek, an aging tape storage company. Or paying $1 billion for MySQL, a software company best known for giving its product away at no cost. Other smart moves by MLP include open-sourcing Sun’s software, so that it generates less revenue. Plus some keen window-dressing, like a one-for-four reverse stock split and a stock ticker name change to JAVA. Yep, the board is so happy with MLP that last year they paid him $11 million – up from $7.7 million the year before. MLP said in a statement that the company is “positioned to offer the kinds of products that can radically help customers reduce expenditures.” In other words, this downturn is actually gonna be good for us. For what it’s worth, I happened to be visiting Sun just as the last downturn was beginning. This was for a big cover profile in Forbes...
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Learn MoreVisionary entrepreneur Marc Andreeeessssen did a Churchill Club interview on Sept. 4 with Kevin Maney of Portfolio magazine. The transcript is here (along with a very unkind PhotoShop picture of Andreeeeeessssssen where they made him look like Beldar.) Money quote comes on Page 3 of the interview: Does that create the danger of a new tech bubble? If there’s been a crisis in a market, you don’t tend to have a new crisis in that market until the people who went through the last crisis aren’t in the system anymore. It was only eight years ago. So here we are in 2008, and there’s still no sign of a bubble in technology, which I can encapsulate in two words: no I.P.O.’s. I’m wondering if anything has happened between Sept. 4 and today that might suggest there is a bit of a tech bubble. Okay, fair enough. I get Marc’s point. There’s no bubble in the public market. That’s because this the time VCs weren’t able to flog their money-losing POS companies off onto a gullible public. Instead they’re going to have to mop up the mess themselves. So if you characterize a bubble as something that can only take place in public markets, fine, there is no bubble. If you...
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