Silicon Valley Archive

Um, Gym Time Anyone?

I went on Flickr to find a picture of me giving a keynote for the speaker tab I'm about to add to the blog. (Yes, having conquered all that keynote angst, I am for hire!) Apparently, I've never searched my name on Flickr and was stunned to see so many pictures from the book tour that I'd never seen. It was actually a nice walk down memory lane. We're so nostalgic, Olivia is going to pull a few for a post later today.

I also came across this one by Thomas Hawk and suddenly, viscerally remembered how much MORE I worked and stressed out when I was on staff at BusinessWeek. This was right after my Digg cover that sucked up six grueling months of my life--including weekends and evenings-- and almost didn't even run. When it did run, it was my first big controversy, and I had no idea how to handle it. All I wanted to do was hide under a bed. It was just before the book deal that changed my life. It was a period when I wasn't eating (clearly!) or sleeping and actually started running to stay sane. I was barely in my 30s, depressed about the state of magazines and trying to figure out what the hell to do with the rest of my career. I honestly didn't know if I could even be a reporter still and be happy or if all those jobs were just gone.

It reminded me of Jason's now much written about (and somewhat mocked) Startup Depression post. This was my period where my ass was getting kicked-- the point when it was, as he says and the awful cliche goes, darkest before the dawn. It was the time I could have just given up and, I don't know, gone into PR or had some babies. (Stop laughing, Olivia.) There was no way for me to know how much my life would change in just two years. I should remember this time every time I feel overworked, because I'm really amazingly lucky. (Or maybe good...? Groan, sorry.) I don't know many reporters who have as great of a life as I do right now.

Also, um, I know it's a wide angle lens and an artsy shot, but I don't remember ever being that skinny!
I'm going to the gym now. (Such a girl, I know.) After the gym, less sap. Really.

More Evidence Our Educational System Is Killing Tech

Recently I did a reading at Google and had lunch with one of the guys who helps recruit college kids to Google. Given the general Google mania among investors, users and Valley folks who hear the lore of the free lobster dinners and massage chairs, I would have assumed his job consisted of saying, "Hey, young genius, want to come work at Google?"

Apparently, it's a good deal harder than that. It seems a whole mini-generation of smart would-be engineers read all those business stories about their jobs being outsourced wholesale to India and pursued other careers. Bill Gates weighed in on this in front of congress earlier this year, too, in his argument for more H1-B visas and was asked by a numskull senator if this was really about taking more high-wage jobs from Americans. I was listening to the hearing on NPR, but even over the radio you could almost hear Gates's disdain for the ignorant question. After all, PhD level engineers are hardly equivalent to migrant workers. He calmly replied that Microsoft wasn't trying to hire foreign engineers on the cheap, these were six figure jobs that Microsoft physically couldn't find enough Americans with the requisite education to hire.

That's bad enough for innovation, tech and the Valley and has been a hot button issue for many local CEOs. But in a recent interview with Tom Foremski, entrepreneur Judy Estrin points out a surprising double whammy in the education system's de-valuing of more artistic and creative endeavors via No Child Left Behind. This may seem like a crazy leap, so bear with me.

Tech is a broad category, but as I've argued before so much of consumer Web innovation (and maybe mobile too, with easy to use platforms like the iPhone) isn't really so techy anymore. There's a very strong creative element to it, building on top of a pretty standard hardware and software stack, with increasingly easy-to-design tools. The best "visionaries" of the Web today are people who appreciate design, usability, name, brand and marketing. Marketing in that grassroots sense, not slimy business sense, but still, its marketing. So what happens to the future of the US tech economy if colleges aren't producing enough computer scientists and elementary and highschools aren't training people to think creatively? It's not good.

The clip is below; her point on this is towards the end. (Thanks to Jeff Slobotski for sending me the link!)

Is this the Recession's Other Shoe?

As I say in the video below, there's an uneasy feeling in much of the Valley these days. We're watching the economy crater all around us, but....well, we're not really seeing any direct impact. Just like watching a pitcher throw a no-hitter, I almost feel like I should whisper that.

Most everyone I know is making more money than they did last year. I only have one friend who has reported a substantial drop in his home price. And the only few people I know who've lost their jobs are journalists-- and that has little to do with the economy, and everything to do with a general industry's ineptitude. Sure we pay sky-high oil prices, but people seem to get around that by biking, taking the train, carpooling and of course driving hybrids. Making things more uneasy for those here in 2000: We didn't cause this one.

It's actually made my challenge at TechTicker harder, because we're supposed to be covering tech from Silicon Valley and Wall Street. On Wall Street, the "tech story" is the same story as every other market story: FINANCIAL MARKET ROLLER COASTER! But in the Valley, people only tangentially seem to care. This has left everyone wondering if we're truly getting a pass on this downturn or if there's a another shoe out there to drop.

Leave it to the new Mr. Sunshine, Paul Kedrosky, to find that shoe. Henry Blodget used to be called Mr. Sunshine around the Tech Ticker offices for his general bearishness of tech stocks earlier in the year, but Paul easily stole that title a few weeks ago in a hotly debated segment on whether falling oil prices are as bad for the economy as rising oil prices. (I agree with his point, btw. And come to think of it, that's one that hurts the Valley too, although more tangentially.)

Kedrosky is back today to argue why a strong dollar is bad for the economy, and it -- finally and unfortunately-- comes back to tech. Tech gets about 55% of its revenue from international sales and that is where a lot of the growth is for the large, publicly traded Valley companies. You know: The ones that would actually greatly affect our local economy if they stumbled, unlike the more written about Web 2.0 upstarts. Watch the video for his full point:

Plagiarism Isn't a Word You Throw Around

I've mostly tried to stay out of the whole Demo v. TechCrunch50 feud. I have friends on both sides and I think both events have done a lot for startups. But Demo needs to publicly weigh in on this immediately. I think anyone who knows Jason knows he wouldn't outright plagiarize something on a topic like this. Even people who loathe Calacanis will tell you he's a shrewd business man, and you'd have to be a dolt to truly lift almost every word from a piece. Other detractors will tell you Jason is an egomaniac. Would an egomaniac take thoughts from what he deems a lesser conference? No, he'd assume he had something better to say.

I happen to think -- behind his occasional performance art-like obnoxiousness-- Jason is a good person too. He and Michael Arrington genuinely want to help entrepreneurs and that's what TC50 is about, fireworks about taking down Demo aside.

The real egomaniac here appears to be Deb McAlister. I don't know her, but it's awfully haughty to think you're the only person who could have come up with things like "Show your product in the first 60 seconds." Not to take anything away from Jason or, I'm assuming Deb as I haven't seen the article she wrote, because these are great tips for an entrepreneur. But anyone who's had to sit through a large number of startup pitches would probably tell you some variation on a lot of this. It's hardly patentable material.

I recently heard Charlene Li speak at a Girls in Tech author chat and a lot of the advice she has for companies in monetizing Web 2.0 is very similar to what I've been saying in interviews and speaking gigs. I don't think either of us would shriek plagiarism, because some of it is just common sense if you've spent a lot of time on social media sites. You see what works and what doesn't. Also because Charlene and I are friends, and both genuinely want to help companies get better at this. Does it matter which one of us they hear it from? Not to me. We both had Web 2.0 books come out within a month of each other. I'll be the first to admit Charlene's is selling better than mine, and I couldn't be more happy for her. If you're truly coming from the point of view of doing something you believe in, (ie- helping entrepreneurs) these things aren't zero sum.

I think TechCrunch is right to demand an apology or the article. You don't toss out an accusation like this and then go radio silent. Even if the Demo side thinks the TC50 camp has been cutthroat in this feud before, now would be the time to take the high road.

YouNoodle Makes Me Feel Much Better about My Finances

Here at SarahLacy.com you could say we're investing in the growth of the business. Think the User Generated Book Tour makes money? HA! My credit cards are wheezing from overuse. And the very talented Olivia certainly isn't volunteering, nor should she be. Combined with a new mortgage and an upcoming $10,000 electrician bill, Mr. Lacy is getting a little antsy about all the money flowing out of our accounts. YouNoodle just made me feel a whole lot better.

The new startup boasts an algorithm that crunches all kinds of data to tell you what your company will be worth in three years. SarahLacy.com will be worth...click for it....

Facebook Shares! Get Your Red Hot Facebook Shares!

I wasn't planning to write about the story sweeping the tech blogosphere about Facebook reportedly allowing employees to sell shares, mostly because I thought others covered it well, and as Peter Kafka points out, we're talking about a small amount of money and a small amount of equity.

But I wound up doing a tech roundup post for TechTicker today and started to get into it, so I figured I'd post some thoughts here too. If you know my writing, you're probably not surprised that it's the larger cultural ramifications of the move that concern me.

Barack Obama Is My New Couch that Finally Arrived

Just a plug for Mat Honan's new book Barack Obama Is Your New Bicycle and his launch party tomorrow. Mat is an awesome guy and most important, he's in the Gotham family! We share the same editor in fact.

I first saw his site (by the same name) when I was deep in line-editing doldrums and it delighted me almost as much as LOLcats. So if you're in SF, come out for a fun party; if not, buy the book!

Valley Girl: Women Are Doing Just Fine in Tech, Thanks for Asking Though!

Here's my latest Valley Girl column, which is the fourth most read on the site today much to my delight! It's always a surprise to me which columns resonate and which don't. Anyway, check it out here.

(OK, I admit "Don't Cry for Us" is better than my original title "What's Up, Bitches?")

It's interesting because at breakfast today in Omaha one of the guys was asking about how to get more women involved in the entrepreneur scene and I didn't have any Valley learnings to pass on because we clearly haven't cracked it either. That lead to a discussion of whether you can have it all and balance family and building a company. I know it's controversial, but I don't think you can, which is a big reason I don't have kids. (Mom and dad if it makes you feel better you can add "yet" to the end of that sentence.) I am in awe of women like Tina Sharkey who can somehow do it.

A few other factoids as I've been thinking about this issue.

Quite Different from Playboy and almost as Suprising

Another list I'm on today: NowPublic's tally of the Web's 50 Most Influential People in Silicon Valley. I'm a respectable #35. Thanks for the props guys!

But more to the point: It struck me how few "traditional" journalists are on this list. I can count them on one hand. Obviously, a group focused on "crowd powered media" is probably going to weigh things differently than if, say, a consortium of newspapers was coming up with it. Still, it pretty much sums up the two sides of the media business right now: There's a ton of pain on the traditional print side as people still grapple with the best ways to be relevant online BUT if you embrace it, iterate, experiment there's a ton of opportunity amid the chaos.

I know I wrote something critical this morning about the blog-induced 20-second hype cycle, but all things considered, I think it's a great sign of the media industry's health that so many new voices-- and new types of voices-- have become so relevant and influential so fast.

Although, as I was discussing this with my BW editor Tom Giles today, (Sorry! You didn't say off the record! ;) ) he noted that individual brands are very hard to sustain, not to mention scale. After all few of us have the energy of Robert Scoble, who may secretly have clones or twins running around with all that video equipment. Tom is right. That's why I try to have the best of both worlds: I work for myself, but heavily contract out to two strong brands in Yahoo and BusinessWeek. We'll see how long I can stay relevant!

Really: Is it Cuil or Us?

Pretty harsh post on TechCrunch this morning about how Cuil "blew" it's launch in 20 seconds. It talks about the absurdly short hype-cycle of less than a minute on today's Web.

I'll be the first to say I was disappointed in the early results of a company that a lot of people I respect think very highly of. And I, too, was a bit stunned after raising that much cash and working so hard, they would launch now. And they should have kept their messaging to indexing more cheaply, the UI and privacy-- not touting greater relevancy, obviously. (We didn't even mention that one in our TT piece, because I hadn't gotten enough time to play with it.)

So yeah, they screwed some things up. But doesn't part of the blame go to the blogosphere? I'm counting me in that too. I was probably too effusive. Like everyone else in the Valley, I find technology and new companies exciting and Cuil has a great story. But you don't make up for that by then eviscerating a company. It doesn't somehow balance out in the greater cosmic order. TechCrunch says the whole thing was Cuil's fault because they didn't let pre-briefed bloggers use the service. Ok, that was dumb, but take some responsibility! No one forced you to write a glowing piece before you'd used the site. If I erred in being too excited about Cuil, that was my bad as a reporter, not the company's. (For the record, I seem to be the only blogger in the land who didn't get a pre-brief, I had just heard a lot about the company from sources for more than a year so I'd been anxious to check it out for some time.)

At some point, the tech blogosphere has to break itself from the junky-like addiction of having to get a story two seconds before the competitor. Can it really drive that much traffic when every other blogger got the same pre-brief? Isn't it better to wait a bit, use the service and write something smarter?

If we've got a 20-second hype cycle in the Valley, that's not Cuil's fault. And I don't think it's serving readers well either. If we write something is amazing in the morning and then total junk in the afternoon, does anyone looking to tech blogs for analysis keep coming back?

I, for one, am not writing the company off after one day. Launches are hard. How many of the products we use and rely on today were perfect the day they launched? I've invited the founders to come on TechTicker and hope they accept. I'd love to hear their thoughts on why the launch day went the way it did and whether they're worried about the backlash or just chalk it up to the increasingly schizophrenic blogosphere.