The VC industry is determined to avoid the mistakes of the past downturn and citing "ad nauseam" from the Sequoia CEO meeting slides. I guess most of us have been telling CEOs to prepare for bad times for a while, maybe citing Calacanis or Wilson. But give it to Sequoia for capturing the mood and putting all the data together it this soon-to-be legendary set of slides that I embedded below. After all the highly succesful firm was founded the year I was born and has been making money ever since; no wonder people are paying attention.
Having said that if I hear one more guy at a board tell me "it's not going to be a V-shaped recovery, you know" (slide 42), I will slap him. I will. So it was a relief to see that another prominent venture capital firm, Whiner Jerkins, had put up a more grounded view of the downturn and its effect on "innovation street". Oh, and i found it through the Bret Easton Ellis of tech blogging, Henry Blodget's Alley Insider. The irony of it all !
Whiner Jerkins All Hands 10/13/08 - Get more Business Plans
Fred,
The presentation was great, thanks for finding it. However, there are some great companies that have been founded in difficult times, and I attempted a little uplifting blog post about it:
http://www.startable.com/2008/10/16/your-startup-can-succeed-even-now/
Healy
Posted by: Healy | October 21, 2008 at 11:11 PM