Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 51331
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2025/07/09 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/9     

2008/9/30 [Industry/Jobs, Industry/Startup] UID:51331 Activity:moderate
9/30    What happened to the dot-com bailout? Also, dans' Slide is totally
        screwed. The worst place to be is a late-stage company with a high
        expense rate, selling products primarily into the U.S. market,
        http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/technology/View_from_Valley_OBrien.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008093012
        \_ I'm not sure why you mention Slide.  It's not a focus of the url
           you have posted.  I always thought Slide was a bizarre expensive
           vanity project of one of the Paypal founders.
2025/07/09 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/9     

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money.cnn.com/2008/09/29/technology/View_from_Valley_OBrien.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008093012
Subscribe to Fortune (Fortune Magazine) -- The heads-down, can-do entrepreneurs, and libertarian-minded financiers who populate the tech industry aren't typically the sorts to long for a government handout. But in the wake of the Treasury Department's $700-billion-plus rescue plan, Peter Thiel speaks for many when he asks a simple question: "What happened to the dot-com bailout?" As founder of hedge fund Clarium Capital and VC firm Founders Fund - with early investments in Facebook, Slide, and LinkedIn, among others - he doesn't need anyone's charity. But as far as bailouts go, his point is that rescuing the Valley would have at least sent a positive message. Even the most vapid online pet-food delivery business looks benign next to arcane financial instruments designed to line the pockets of investment bankers. "It is an odd reflection on the priorities of our society," Thiel says, "that we value finance over technological innovation." Welcome to Silicon Valley, where locals view Washington with distrust (except when lobbying for more H-1B visas), and the unifying attitude can be summarized in five words: You get what you deserve. Failure is considered as integral to creation as success here, and it's expected that both be allowed to take their natural course. But the collapse of Wall Street is clearly more than an ideological matter. For all of the talk in the Valley about wanting to be left alone, the financial crisis makes it clear that the Valley isn't an island. After all, a fifth of all IT spending comes from the financial sector. On the positive side, with a few exceptions, the biggest players in tech do a lot of international business, providing a cushion during a domestic downturn. They also don't borrow much money and so aren't as exposed to credit crunch. In fact, many of the Valley blue chips are cash machines. Fortune 500) (it's not in the Valley, but it's clearly of the Valley) has been figuring out where to spend all its cash. The company recently announced a $40 billion stock-buyback plan. Fortune 500) recently announced layoffs of nearly 25,000 over the next three years, as a result of the acquisition of systems integrator EDS. It sounds like bad news - and for those about to lose their job, it truly is - but it doesn't really speak to the health of the company. A week after the layoff news, HP announced its own buyback plan: $8 billion (or roughly the amount the company will save from the layoffs). Oracle has $11 billion in debt as a result of a years-long acquisition spree, but it also holds $13 billion in cash, and co-president Safra Catz remains relatively unconcerned with all the bad news. Fortune 500) sells plenty to beleaguered financial institutions, and it's logical to assume that the company will take a hit, but Catz thinks Oracle's products and high-profit service contracts will be the last things to be cut from operating budgets. "The company has so much momentum, such a broad product line, that if a customer is buying, they are much more likely to buy from us. If they've got to decide something not to spend on, it's probably something that's a little bit less strategic and less important," Catz said in a recent analyst conference call. Fortune 500) CEO Eric Schmidt echoed the sentiment, telling reporters, "It's business as usual at Google." If the dot-com collapse is any guide, things could get nasty. Fortune 500), was impaled when bankrupt customers sold assets - including Sun servers - at auction. Sun then lost another set of customers when the survivors decided it was better to buy used. 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The transformation of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley - both big green investors - into bank holding companies apparently won't alter their environmental strategies. "In terms of our renewable-energy investing business, there's no change," says Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally. But companies that rely on bank financing will feel pain, according to Ethan Zindler, head of North American research for New Energy Finance. "We've already seen some pullback for some big solar and wind deals," he says. "Bigger developers who have solid balance sheets will be okay, but the smaller guys could be in trouble." If Microsoft's $40 billion buyback plan says anything, it's that the company couldn't find a better use for its money. If the sentiment infiltrates Microsoft's peer group, then acquisitions will surely slow. And that's nothing but grim news for the myriad feature-oriented Web startups that were founded mainly to be acquired by Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo. If the Web giants stop buying, a lot of Web 20 fruit will die on the vine. Bullish in the Valley But while death and failure are part of the Valley psyche, so too is optimism. Peter Thiel thinks people are overreacting to the crisis. "I strongly think that for the next few months, equities, especially financial stocks, move higher," he says. "We have this leverage finance bubble like we had in the '20s, and there's an argument that we're headed to something comparable to the '30s," he says. It was the hub of new media and technology, with the radio and the airplane. But will entrepreneurs, the lifeblood of the Valley, still come if the money's drying up? "If anything," Thiel says, "we'll have a lot more talented people going into things like real engineering, as opposed to financial engineering." Reporter Mina Kimes and senior editor Todd Woody contributed to this article. Hank's last stand The ousted AIG chief has been on a furious campaign to reclaim his good name. No one foresaw how strange the last chapter of this tale would be. How the credit crisis affects you When banks don't lend to each other and the credit system gets backed up, consumers have a hard time getting a loan to buy a home or car, small businesses can't expand and employees are at risk of losing their jobs. Fruits of their labor A US fruit company harvests and processes tropical berries with help from Amazon locals, while also teaching them how to preserve the forest.