Eric Schmidt: We Don't Talk About Occupy Wall Street In The Valley

Re:Eric Schmidt: We Don't Talk About Occupy Wall Street In T... by SwellJoe on Friday December 23, 2011 @10:27PM (#3388063)

I left the valley two years ago specifically because I was losing my sense of perspective; there is a culture and mindset that is found nowhere else in the world. Overall, it's probably a good thing; and I'd go back there if I needed to start a tech company from scratch again. But, it also leads to a very limited worldview, and I think it's risky even for startup founders to buy too heavily into the reality distortion one finds in the valley.

The number of people who are making clones (with slight differences) of companies no one outside of the valley has ever heard of just blows my mind. Sometimes I'd meet two or three people at one party working on the same stupid idea in different startups. It's too easy to lose connection with your customers when you spend so much time in an echo chamber.

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Re:Eric Schmidt: We Don't Talk About Occupy Wall Street In T... by redwood on Friday December 23, 2011 @11:09PM (#3388150)

As a native, I couldn't agree more. I've witnessed a transition from heavy hardware-based long-haul investment thinking to short-term low risk internet investment. Sure this is totally logical, but the hive mind of VCs who follow every buzz word (social -> big data, etc) is pathetic. These VCs should be the most creative, ahead of the curve investers in the world. Instead they're more often followers excited to be on the cutting edge, but too risk-averse to invest in anything meaningful. It's like another iteration of the quarterly-oriented corporate mindset. Sad. All the hardware is moving to East Asia...

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