Showing posts with label Silicon Valley. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Silicon Valley. Show all posts

Sunday, February 3, 2013

Those spaceships are long lost!

The IT bubble burst long back, and with it, did many fortunes...

The last decade of 1990s was a dream run for internet start-ups, and anything even faintly related to “.com” syndrome would be lapped by investors like hot cakes, without paying much heed to what the company does or the kind of potential it holds. This was where the bubble began, and this was in itself responsible for its bursting! It began in 1995, peaked on March 10, 2000 when the NASDAQ reached 5,048.62 points before bursting... During this entire period, the stock markets of US and other western countries saw the bulls in total control, especially with regards to the Internet and technology companies. Moreover, most of the Internet companies that were aggressive during these times were financed either by VCs or IPOs. And when this bubble burst, there was mayhem at the stock markets. What triggered the burst of this bubble was a massive multi-billion dollar simultaneous sell order from leading technology companies such as Dell, Cisco and IBM. Though it is said that this initial sell-off was just a coincidence, but it was too strong for investors at the NASDAQ to handle. Between March 2000 and October 2002, the Internet and technology companies shed a whopping $5 trillion in market value!

Different analysts have their own reasons as to what led to the crash-landing. Some say that it was a result of the ‘irrational crowd behavior’ that led people to believe that there was substantial value to be made in this field of business. Others however feel that this was a result of lack of information about this new domain, and their inability to ascertain the asset value, which drove rational people to commit this mistake. According to Rob Enderle, Technology Analyst, “The Dot com bubble burst, because it was feeding frenzy on Internet stocks and investments without any adequate financial controls or acceptable business practices. Folks acted like they were going to be measured on how much money they could spend in the shortest period of time.” Another opinion points out that the business model that these Internet companies followed at that time was flawed.

The idea of these companies was to work towards monopolising the sector that they functioned in, with the help of network effects and rope-in as many subscribers as possible, rather than think about ways to earn revenues from the same. What added to their miseries were the increased spending in the technology that would enable Y2K switchover. The companies soon realised that all these investments were of no use for them. Whatever be the case, this bubble is recalled as the worst that the Silicon Valley has seen till date. It wiped off almost 50% of IT-based companies across the world... rough patch indeed! Some of the prominent names that were shaven off were: Webvan, Pets.com, Kozmo.com and Floorz.com.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Blogger uses rap to teach pithy business lessons

Ben Horowitz, a prominent venture capital investor in Silicon Valley, says rap holds a trove of lessons for tech entrepreneurs

Silicon Valley, where engineers in khakis write software code, might not at first glance have much to do with the world of rap music, where artists in sagging pants write irreverent lyrics.

But Ben Horowitz, a prominent venture capital investor here, says rap holds a trove of lessons for tech entrepreneurs. Throw business classes and books out the window, Horowitz says, and listen to rap lyrics instead.

Horowitz applies his theory on his blog, where he has attracted a following of tech readers and other executives by offering business lessons, almost all of them preceded by a rap lyric that summarises a moral, and with recordings from Grooveshark, the music site. In the process, he has linked two cultures in Silicon Valley, which is not exactly known for its racial or cultural diversity.

Entrepreneurs may do well to listen to Horowitz’s advice. He started the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz with Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, and the firm made vast amounts of money on investments in companies like Groupon and Skype, and stands to make more on Facebook’s initial public offering. Late January the firm announced that it had raised its third fund in three years, $1.5 billion in fresh capital, a large amount even in Silicon Valley. The two men previously started Opsware, a data center software company, and sold it to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2007.

Horowitz uses rap as an introduction as he philosophises about business challenges like how to fire executives, why founders run their companies better than outside chief executives and how to stand up to difficult board members. “All the management books are like, ‘This is how you set objectives, this is how you set up an organisation chart,’ but that’s all the easy part of management,” Horowitz said in an interview in his spacious office on Sand Hill Road Menlo Park (California), the epicenter of tech investing. “The hard part is how you feel. Rap helps me connect emotionally.”

How to deal, for instance, with the stress of the 11th-hour, late-night auditing mishap that almost stymied the $1.6 billion sale of Opsware? Listen to the Kanye West song “Stronger”: “Now that that don’t kill me/Can only make me stronger/I need you to hurry up now/’Cause I can’t wait much longer/I know I got to be right now/’Cause I can’t get much wronger.”


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.


Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, October 22, 2012

RaBieD!

Latest stats on Reverse Brain Drain

Nirad. C. Chowdhury’s shallow claim to be the sole Briton living today who is aghast at the degeneration of Anglo Saxons, does not undermine his deep rooted admiration for the all conquering Britain in their heydays of colonial rule. Many before and since have had a quintessential fancy for the Western lifestyle, their values and their education, the inspiration of which provided them the driving force to land up on foreign shores. The colonial rule is gone now, but the magnetism of the West still persists.

Notwithstanding the fact that US has replaced other nations as the most favoured destination for immigration – with Indians and Chinese forming the bulk of them either in Silicon Valley or in American Universities – the current presentiments are alluring many to return to their home countries.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.

For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles.
 
IIPM : The B-School with a Human Face
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)