India Archive

Big News! Also, Yes, I Am Back at TechCrunch

As loyal readers know I’ve been spending quite a bit of the last few months quietly working on some pretty radical and exciting career changes. I’ve already blogged about my role shifting at Yahoo's TechTicker, and the fact that I’m cutting out almost all conferences this year. I'm finally able to talk about the last two pieces of news today, and you’ll see why it was crucial for me to make a little more time in my schedule. 

The first one is something I’ve been working towards since December 2007: I’ve finally closed my next book deal. Before I tell you about it, let me step back and say that the experience of writing “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good” was probably the most exhilarating and challenging thing I’ve ever done in my life. I knew I wanted to do another book, but I was worried that anything would pale in comparison.

Business reporters are rarely in the middle of something that’s also a mass cultural movement, the way Web 2.0 was. And it’s even rarer to be the reporter in the middle of that trend early-on, with near-unfettered access. The book was also the culmination of ten years of covering startups and the Web, with so many of the themes of the book coming out of articles I’d written week-after-week and conversations at endless breakfasts, lunches and dinners with investors, coders and nearly everyone who makes up the Valley ecosystem. I worked hard, but I was also in the right place at the right time, and I didn’t think it was possible that I’d find another book that I could be that passionate about again.

Then, a month after finally turning it into my publishers in 2007, I was sitting on a beach in Mexico and my next idea hit me. (My husband may never take me on vacation again.)

The new book is about global entrepreneurship. What I don’t mean by that is globalization or social entrepreneurship. It’s the story of real, ambitious, risk-taking entrepreneurs in emerging markets around the world who are taking advantage of the turmoil all around them to build huge businesses, the Western venture capital money that’s trying to invest in them, and the cultural chasm the two are, so far, having a hard time crossing. To tell this story right, I’m going to spend between 30-40 weeks on the ground in Israel, China, India, Africa and Mexico/South America over the next year and a half. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I've actually already started. It works out to roughly 2-3 weeks at a time overseas, followed by 2-3 weeks here, and a few months with no travel here and there for sanity. My publisher is John Wiley & Sons and, yes, I was border-line insane to try to sell a book in this market. Huge thanks to them for believing in the project so much, and my agent, Daniel Greenberg, for pulling off the impossible once again.

I’ll still keep a foot firmly planted in Silicon Valley—after all, it’s an integral part of this story, too. And I’ll still write my Valley Girl column for BusinessWeek and do three-to-four interviews per month plus my daily Valley Buzz post for TechTicker. I’ll also still appear on NBC’s Press:Here during the weeks that I’m in town.

So, to sum up, we've got a column, I'm hosting one show, commuting an hour to be a regular guest on another and traveling around the world to write a book…is that enough to keep me busy? Hardly. That’s why I’m also announcing that I’ll have an ongoing gig with TechCrunch. Actually, Michael Arrington already did. Given my other responsibilities, I won't be there everyday, but I’ll be writing two-to-five posts per week, likely a lot on the weekends, a lot on airplanes and a lot from the road. You're better off sending announcements about your latest product launch wherever it is you send them now, because I’ll be focusing on analysis of the business of Silicon Valley, emerging markets and the collision between them.

While I've been working on pulling the book together for more than a year, no one is more surprised than I am at the TechCrunch announcement. You should have seen the Cheshire cat "I won" grin on Michael Arrington's face when we finished negotiating it all. He and I have had an ongoing Abbot-and-Costello routine about how I'd never write there because I was too busy and liked writing on this site too much.

But when I filled in for him in February, my thoughts changed. Trolls aside, I was blown away by the level of engagement and love for that blog among entrepreneurs around the world. It's not just a blog about Silicon Valley and Web 2.0. Subscribing to newspapers or business magazines doesn't really mean you read them. (Ask the tall plastic-wrapped stack in my hallway.) But TechCrunch readers read every single thing on that site, chew it up, digest it, spit it out and talk to their friends about it. It seemed the perfect place to write about what I was seeing on the road as the book unfolds, because I'm well aware I can't write this book alone. It needs a community. After all, a world of entrepreneurs is a pretty big topic.

I'm not killing SarahLacy.com. I'll be cross-posting my TechCrunch stuff here, linking to BusinessWeek and Yahoo stuff, and writing more personal posts about my experiences on the road as I travel. And yes, we'll have FlipCam footage.

I said in an interview late last year that my next book would be "stupidly ambitious" and I think I've delivered on that promise. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I know I will.

China Walloping India

Where have I been all day? Looking through VC numbers. Here are a few segments I did for Tech Ticker on yesterday's mixed news about U.S. venture capital in China, and below a piece on today's news about U.S. venture capital in India.

Both regions became the new black a few years ago and billions were invested, offices were opened, partners were relocated. And most VCs I talk to regret it, but at the same time don't feel like India and China are markets they can afford to ignore. I don't think this gets covered enough here, given it'll heavily influence at least the next 10-year venture capital cycle, which you can't divorce from the health of the Valley as a whole. We're in the midst of a huge change in this asset class in a lot of directions and local to global is one of the most pronounced that could make or break firms. It's important enough I plan to visit both India and China in the next year (hopefully!) to check out the startup scene first hand. Enough extrapolating from data!

But for now, back to the data...This quarter we saw some retrenching and refocusing in a pretty major way. Watch the videos for the details. Spoiler alert: China is waaaaay hotter than India. That was a surprise to me because I hear more hand wringing about China anecdotally.