Saturday, August 5, 2000

Bubble? What bubble?

The San Jose Mercury-News reports that venture capital investment in Silicon Valley in the second quarter of 2000 was $6.9 billion. That's a $27.6 billion/year rate. It's also up 12% over the first quarter of the year, and 157% up from the same quarter one year earlier.

That buys a lot of smoke. Ever wonder what percentage of the ads in Fast Company, Upside — and hell, every medium out there — is VC money, burning it's way down the to next pre-IPO round? Me too. If anybody knows, please tell me.

My guess is it's better than half.

Now, do you think the recipients of VC largesse are looking for the kind of clues that are coming from Cluetrain? Here's a clue: with few exceptions, the companies hiring the Cluetrain co-authors to come talk are ones whose primary businesses are selling goods and services to customers, not promises to investors. They tend to have billions in sales, if not valuations. We're talking about companies who know they have problems, and are in the clue market, big time. These are real brands, like Johnson & Johnson, Peoplesoft, Procter & Gamble, Borland, US West.

Interesting, no?

Now he'll never sleep

RageBoy started a blog. Like, today.

He says mine looks better, but he wrote that was before he did his usual terrific Art thing. Between X'oclock this morning and 9:43 this evening, he turned this thing from a few neat paragraphs into one of the best-looking blogs in existence. So it's not enough that the guy's a knockout writer. Nooooo. He has to be a gonzo designer as well. What a pisser.

Speaking of which, dig the photo at the bottom of the page.

Speaking of design

The folks at 37 Signals, which may be the most clued-in marketing agency on the planet (yes, they're in Chicago), have come up with a brilliant way to deliver a complete identity program for your start-up in ten minutes or less. This is it:

I learned about 37 Signals when I met Ernest Kim, one of the company's four partners. At the time we were both consulting USWestDex, which has always had, I believe, the best (i.e. most user-friendly) phone number search engine.

I love 37's whole "simple for sale" concept. Read what they say about themselves — (especially what they say about suits). Great shit.

Markets are Links

A site called WebMostLinked.com ranks web sites by that most conversational of inventions (thank you Dr. Weinberger): the hyperlink. Ranked by inbound links, it's no surprise to see Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo, Netcenter and other Usual Suspects at the top of the list. But it is a surprise to see how some of one's own most-visited sites stack up. Which is exactly what I just did, going back through my own recent surfing history, which tends to run heavy on Linux- and Cluetrain-related sites. Interesting stuff. Dig it:

Forgive me for not making all those domains live links, but I gotta get some sleep.

Maybe later.