> also: "The Silicon Valley of tomorrow will not look like that of today"
I came to live in Silicon Valley in the 80's. At the time, the technical press was bemoaning that the glory days were gone, making chips had become a race to the bottom, engineers were being laid off, and there wouldn't be enough jobs for the people who were already in the valley, much less the people in school who would graduate in 1 to 5 years with engineering degrees.
It bummed me out because I was at Intel, which seemed like a good company when I joined them out of school, but they were laying off people and it was "clear" that the semiconductor houses were going to consolidate down to nothing.
At the time I took a "big risk" and left an established company and joined a startup that seemed to be doing okay. At least they weren't losing money. It was called Sun Microsystems, they had just gone public (the Friday before I joined), and were less than 2,000 people. They were building these things called "Workstations" which everyone figured would fail because as soon as the "Big" companies (HP, IBM, and DEC) decided to get serious about this space it would squash them like a bug. They were doing some crazy things, like telling you all of their APIs and letting anyone copy them. They were using computer chips they bought from Motorola and running a University's version of the UNIX operating system on them. Their marketing message was simple, "We're open, we may not be here next month but don't worry because everyone has the information they need to make compatible stuff for our systems so even if we're dead, you can still use our gear."
It was a very different message than what the "big boys" were saying.
10 years later they were the "gorilla" and DEC, HP, and IBM were having a hard time keeping up. Then the Internet caught on an suddenly they were in a maelstrom of innovation and change and couldn't change with it. Ex-sun folks like to joke they became the dot "." in Oracle.com.
When the dot com crash hit I was older and had gone through the semi-conductor crash so I wasn't sure that this was "the end" as everyone was predicting. There would never be another VC who would be willing to risk giving you money. There would never be another retail investor that would buy and IPO for a company that wasn't making money. There was no "moat" or anyway to protect your market share so the only companies that would survive would be the distilled and conglomerated husks of the old dot com dinosaurs.
Then Google and Facebook exploded.
So what does it all mean?
It means that if this is the first time you've seen the phoenix burst into flames you will just know that its dead and there isn't any left to do but sweep up the ashes. But if this is your second, or third, or fourth, trip around the block you know that the last trip found a match between value and technologies ability to deliver it with enough margin to support building a company. And you know that people are going to spend what they earn and there will be new things to do and new ways to spend. If you can see the things that made gave the market wings over the last 10 years, often there are hints about the next thing that will generate the excitement.
And if you can't, that is okay because the person that can? They are going to need talented engineers to help them bring it to market and make it work. There is something magical about taking $0.02 cents of electricity and turning it into something someone will buy for $1. People that can internalize the value of information will understand how to capture value while building new products. And that in turn will fund an entirely new ecosystem of businesses, large and small.
There is nothing more creative, and innovative, than a group of engineering friends with too much time on their hands.
Thank you for sharing your experience, that was insightful.
The long view of history, rising and falling waves of innovation, funding, market demands, new ideas and shifts in technology.. After each winter, a new cycle begins with a search for:
> a match between value and [technology's] ability to deliver it with enough margin to support building a company
Which sounds like "product-market fit".
That makes me think, what may seem like a downturn in the industry or saturation in a market segment, could be a sign that fresh pastures are needed, with new opportunities for those who can see where things will go, the next big ideas (which often start small and look like a toy to the established/entrenched players).
> If you can see the things that gave the market wings over the last 10 years, often there are hints about the next thing that will generate the excitement.
This is what I love about the world of computers and technology. The people who inhabit it, who push it forward, are driven by imagination and a kind of undying hope, to see the blue skies beyond the weather of today.
I’m with you. Every generation seems to have a time when the “it’s all been invented” meme takes off. There’s plenty of innovation in our future. It just takes imagination to envision it. When I hear people saying otherwise, I see it as an indictment on their powers of imagination.
> also: "The Silicon Valley of tomorrow will not look like that of today"
I came to live in Silicon Valley in the 80's. At the time, the technical press was bemoaning that the glory days were gone, making chips had become a race to the bottom, engineers were being laid off, and there wouldn't be enough jobs for the people who were already in the valley, much less the people in school who would graduate in 1 to 5 years with engineering degrees.
It bummed me out because I was at Intel, which seemed like a good company when I joined them out of school, but they were laying off people and it was "clear" that the semiconductor houses were going to consolidate down to nothing.
At the time I took a "big risk" and left an established company and joined a startup that seemed to be doing okay. At least they weren't losing money. It was called Sun Microsystems, they had just gone public (the Friday before I joined), and were less than 2,000 people. They were building these things called "Workstations" which everyone figured would fail because as soon as the "Big" companies (HP, IBM, and DEC) decided to get serious about this space it would squash them like a bug. They were doing some crazy things, like telling you all of their APIs and letting anyone copy them. They were using computer chips they bought from Motorola and running a University's version of the UNIX operating system on them. Their marketing message was simple, "We're open, we may not be here next month but don't worry because everyone has the information they need to make compatible stuff for our systems so even if we're dead, you can still use our gear."
It was a very different message than what the "big boys" were saying.
10 years later they were the "gorilla" and DEC, HP, and IBM were having a hard time keeping up. Then the Internet caught on an suddenly they were in a maelstrom of innovation and change and couldn't change with it. Ex-sun folks like to joke they became the dot "." in Oracle.com.
When the dot com crash hit I was older and had gone through the semi-conductor crash so I wasn't sure that this was "the end" as everyone was predicting. There would never be another VC who would be willing to risk giving you money. There would never be another retail investor that would buy and IPO for a company that wasn't making money. There was no "moat" or anyway to protect your market share so the only companies that would survive would be the distilled and conglomerated husks of the old dot com dinosaurs.
Then Google and Facebook exploded.
So what does it all mean?
It means that if this is the first time you've seen the phoenix burst into flames you will just know that its dead and there isn't any left to do but sweep up the ashes. But if this is your second, or third, or fourth, trip around the block you know that the last trip found a match between value and technologies ability to deliver it with enough margin to support building a company. And you know that people are going to spend what they earn and there will be new things to do and new ways to spend. If you can see the things that made gave the market wings over the last 10 years, often there are hints about the next thing that will generate the excitement.
And if you can't, that is okay because the person that can? They are going to need talented engineers to help them bring it to market and make it work. There is something magical about taking $0.02 cents of electricity and turning it into something someone will buy for $1. People that can internalize the value of information will understand how to capture value while building new products. And that in turn will fund an entirely new ecosystem of businesses, large and small.
There is nothing more creative, and innovative, than a group of engineering friends with too much time on their hands.