Yahoo Archive

Back When We Thought the Downturn Had Already Hit...

I was looking through old TechTicker pieces because it seems I'm at least making a cameo appearance at CES this year. Tony Hsieh, Brian Solis, SomewhatFrank Gruber and I are (hopefully) throwing a HUGE, EPIC opening night bash, just waiting on our sponsor to come through. (Fingers x'ed!) I'll update via the blog and Twitter as it will be amazing and you HAVE to come. Even more amazing than Tony and my BlogWorld party, if that's possible...

At any rate, I thought it might be fun to do some man-on-the-street stuff at the conference for TechTicker, mostly because my editor, Brad, is brilliant at stitching on-location footage together. I was thinking of this piece from SXSW (yes I did things there besides get heckled), so I dug it out to show my producer.

It's actually pretty funny to watch. We seem so naive just a few months ago! Valleywag? Gone. Rev3? Layoffs. Get Satsifaction? Well, still throwing epic parties at least...

Watch and enjoy.

Busy Little Valley Bee

SO. After a whirlwind 2008 where I met entrepreneurs in about 25 cities or more, I am finally back in San Francisco for a while.

I feel very torn. It's been an amazing year, and I've met so many amazing people. My entire concept of entrepreneurship has been forever changed, and I am, of course, so grateful for the outpouring of support for the book. It's been one of the toughest book-buying markets in publishers' memories and it was no small feat to keep copies moving!

On the plus side of being home, I've barely gotten to live in the house that's continually draining my bank account lately, and it's always nice to see my husband. I also feel like meeting so many entrepreneurs around the world has come at the cost of not staying in better touch with entrepreneurs in the Valley. So it'll be nice to stay put for a bit and reconnect. And what better time than a month with a zillion Holiday parties? Headed to the Zynga party tonight, and of course, there's the sarahlacy.com happy hour at the Beauty Bar in one week! RSVP, y'all!

Here are Olivia and I after the spectacular Get Satisfaction party last Friday, inhaling some Arinell's pizza. (Just a few blocks from my house-- another win to being home!) [photo credit: Geoffrey Ellis]

Of course, another *huge* plus in being home is that I can focus more on my actual job: reporting. I forgot to mention it, but I re-upped my columnist contract with BusinessWeek in November. I was incredibly flattered to even get it renewed given the macro state of the economy and how hard hit media has been already. (And how flaky I've been on deadlines. Doh.)

I wrote two columns that detailed *why* things are going to be far worse for Venture Capitalists in this downturn, even as the Valley will have an easier time than in 2001-ish. You can read them here and here. Then, this week, I wrote about everything that's wrong with eCommerce and why I think we're about to see an explosion of innovation. (And why I can't wait!) I've got a lot of great ideas for the next few months, but as always hit me up if there's a topic you want me to tackle!

I've also been pretty busy at TechTicker. A few recent videos I liked on the jump!

A whole slew of other changes are in store for my various jobs and include a few new projects that I can't wait to tell you guys about. But more details on all that later... Bottom line is I'm mostly out of promotion mode (FINALLY!) and solidly back in reporter mode so more great content coming your way this month and in 2009.

And now, to some videos...

The Annual December Layoffs

One of the sad things about working in media over the last eight years is the annual tradition of pre-Christmas layoffs. And somehow, no matter where I've worked, I have eluded the knife every time.

Today, at Yahoo, two things were the same as almost every other time: I eluded the knife again, and someone who I thought was one of our single biggest assets got cut. But the layoffs were different for two reasons, too:

1. It was way more people than I've ever seen laid off before, at about 1,500
2. It wasn't because the company was losing money; it's because the company is trapped in the Wall Street game.

Now, as a business reporter, I get it, Wall Street. Yahoo is a bloated company and its investors gave the board years to make necessary changes. It didn't. And while I wasn't at Web 2.0, everyone who saw Jerry Yang's talk said he couldn't articulate what the strategy even is. That's just unacceptable after the last few years of Yahoo's floundering and turning down the Microsoft bid.

Yes, as a business reporter I get all of this. Still, as a journalist, I'm so struck by the power and reach of Yahoo's platform. This may be a troubled asset next to, say, Google, but not next to 90% of media companies around the world.

In light of this-- and all the layoffs that everyone is going through this Holiday season-- the video below had a particular resonance for me today. Typically I'm a fan of Diane Von Furstenberg-- but today I'm sort of a fan of her husband.

Glamming It Up (Apparently, Pirate-Style)

Sarah Browne has a post on Facebook about Girly Glam being back, and yours truly is cited for my fashion sense, in particular one pair of boots I own. Although, here at TechTicker, said fashion sense only gets mocked. Mocked in the form of graphics no less!

Here's Howard and Brad's commentary on my lovely DVF outfit today:

Is it me or do I look like some host of a children's show from the 1970s?

Ahem. Back to Sarah Browne's post. Beyond the shout out, it is an interesting one, and hopefully the link above works within FB's digital walls. If not, here's an excerpt:

"So does all this girly glam mean that voila! women have finally achieved so much equality that we can now afford to literally let it all hang out? That women no longer need to dress or behave like men? That we have choices — every permutation of chic from chictini to Hillary’s custom pantsuits to Sarah Palin’s much ballyhooed booty from Saks?"

It's a thorny issue, as I've written about before. But I'm a big believer that it should be a non-issue. The key isn't "Oh, now we're all wearing dresses." It's that women are free to wear whatever they want: jeans, dresses or VC-esque khakis and blue shirts. Sometimes--gasp!-- professional women rock different looks depending on the day. At Yahoo I wear a dress almost every day; when I was writing my book I wore jeans and a t-shirt almost every day. Paul Carr-- never missing an opportunity to mock me-- calls it the difference between SarahLacy.com and Sarah Lacy. But I think they're both me.

Sure, I dress a little girlier than your average CNBC host when I'm on camera, but that's because I think suits are unflattering. I mean, really, if someone wants to count me out because I wear a dress and not a boxy 1980s suit: Go right ahead. As far as I'm concerned, that only gives me more of an advantage. 

Why Evan Made a Smart Move

Om and I seem to be of the same mind. Biggest gamble on this deal: What the currency of Facebook stock is worth. That, and I take Evan at his word that he wants to keep building Twitter. After all, it's not all about money, particularly for people who've already made money. Twitter is a one of the biggest ideas in Web 2.0 and the team knows that doesn't just come around because you decide, "Ok we sold that one, what next?"

I think they made the right call. More in my Dirt segment on TechTicker today below:

What Other Entrepreneurs Can Learn from Dogster

Pets.com may have been one of the most wasteful and frivolous of dot com companies, but Dogster is one of the most disciplined of the Web 2.0 generation. It's interesting since Pets.com had a clearer business model, and satisfied a more obvious need. Just goes to show execution wins, in a downturn or no. While a lot of Dogster's smart moves were made in the company's early days, there are plenty of tips in my TechTicker interview with Dogster CEO Ted Rheingold for cash-strapped entrepreneurs worried about 2009.

Clip one:

Clip two (featuring moxie!):

More Pain Coming for Online Video

My sympathies go out to the people behind the shows canceled on Revision3 last week. Clearly, a lot of fans were upset. You could see it in the comments on CEO Jim Louderback's blog: People loved the shows that were canceled and outraged that Rev3 would do such a thing. That outrage fed itself as they read each others comments. "See! Other people loved these shows too! How could you cancel them?!?!?!"

I have no doubt they were loved and no doubt Jim did the right thing. And that weird dichotomy shows why we still don't have full-fledged original content channels online: Video is hard to do well and video is expensive.

That causes two problems that are still hurting original video content online especially as we enter a protracted downturn: Audience and money.

Is Your Startup Going out of Business?

My guest today on TechTicker was Keith Rabois of Slide. Before Slide, Keith was an early member of the PayPal mafia and an early exec at LinkedIn. He also has an advisory role with Sequoia Capital -- where among other exploits he pretty much hand-delivered YouTube to the firm. In other words, in a sea of engineer-minded entrepreneurs, Keith actually knows a thing or two about the business side of startups. He also has opinions and isn't afraid to voice them.

I had to de-Southern myself before taping as I usually sound like I'm saying "Rab-a-way" instead of Rabois. No joke, Mr. Lacy thought it was spelled this way for about the first six months I knew Keith. Ah, the downside of being on camera-- proper pronunciation!

The funniest backstage moment this morning was when the control room told me my guest was ready and I sat down, shuffled my notes and looked up to see a very, very old man in the monitor. "Um, that's not Keith," I said. Oddly enough, the guy sort of looked like a 50-year-older Keith, so I half-wondered if the downturn was just aging him. Turns out, the studio was just confused.

So here are the clips in case you didn't make it over to TechTicker today. The first one is on all the layoffs in the startup world last week (some 250 jobs all together and counting) and what separates companies that are seeing opportunity in the downturn from those seeing doom and gloom. The second clip is about how all those layoffs and hard-to-get-series-b-rounds will ripple into Silicon Valley's macro economy. And the third is about Slide itself: a company planning to spend its way out of the downturn.

Flight to, er, No Returns?

When I took the job at TechTicker, I had no idea a massive credit and banking crisis would become the dominant story of the markets. As I wrote before, it makes me feel a tad irrelevant as someone who focuses on tech companies and startup culture. But the plus is it's forced me to stay very engaged in the news flow of this crisis, and re-engage with my finance reporter roots.

Fun fact: I actually started my career covering finance. The reason I don't have a Southern accent? I used to get mocked when I called Wall Street and said things like, "What do y'all think about this market?" Good times.

Anyway, during the last downturn I talked to experts over and over again who talked about a flight to quality-- ie focusing tech holdings on the big, safe tech names-- as the way to survive the turbulence. Similarly, I have CNBC on in the green room all day and all I hear is that same advice. OK, so let's see how you did if you took it: According to this chart you would have lost money on nearly every name.

Now, I KNOW, people will say ten years isn't long-term enough. Tell that to someone who was ten years away from retirement in 1999, first of all. Also, that should be considered long-term in technology, shouldn't it? It reminds me of something Peter Thiel once told me that flicks to the cultural difference between Silicon Valley and Wall Street: A bet on, say, Microsoft isn't actually a technology play. Because Microsoft wants things to stay the same. It's actually a vote against innovation.

What if instead of keeping the bet on Yahoo ten years ago as the experts told you to, you bought Google at the IPO? Or instead of SAP, you went with Salesforce? Young risky companies, yes. But, per Peter's point, it seems that's a wiser bet if you're a believer in the fundamentals of tech, because the fundamentals of tech involve change and disruption. Very few companies can stay on top of multiple market and technological shifts. Investors should think long and hard about that conventional wisdom this time around.

More Fun with Paul Kedrosky

You too can be like Buffett!

...and a bad time for peer-to-peer lending

As a side note, I really like my pirate-y shirt/vest ensemble today! It was actually the result of Twitter. Diane Von Furstenberg Twittered a link to the site with a big sale on shoes and - duh- I clicked. I didn't buy shoes but did buy this shirt and vest and a few other things. Later tonight, when Mr. Lacy looks at me exasperated and says, "Where did THAT shirt come from??" I plan on blaming Twitter. Hot outfit AND an alibi? Don't tell me there's not a business model in there somewhere...