Ben's Blog

JUNE 18, 2011

In reading my friend Steve Blank’s arguments, I found the bubble definition quite compelling: “A tech bubble is the rapid inflation in the valuation of public and private technology companies that exceeds their fundamental value by a large margin.&#. So I looked to find evidence to support the bubble hypothesis.

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thebarefootvc

FEBRUARY 1, 2011

He founded eBay to empower individuals through the use of new technology, and has created livelihoods for millions of individuals throughout the world. I have the opportunity to build bridges from NYC to Nairobi, from Dhaka to Denver, from Silicon Valley to Singapore.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. 1970 – 1995: The Golden Age. The world of building profitable startups ended in 1995. August 1995 – March 2000: The Dot.Com Bubble.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2014

During her career she made a big point of not telling you: she was one of the first women Venture Capitalist’s in Silicon Valley (along with M.J. When I was where you are, 36 years ago (can ya believe it) I didn’t have a plan—but I did have an aspiration: I wanted to go to Silicon Valley and I wanted to work in startups.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2013

Super-angel investors are a new category of investors (like Mike Maples Jr. ), closer to venture capitalists, who are perceived to be more sophisticated, insightful, or well-connected in the startup community, particularly with respect to technology companies in Silicon Valley and other technology centers (also called micro-VCs).

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. One could argue that there’s nothing new here, as Internet distibution models started in 1995. Here’s why. Electron-based Venture Capital.

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Up and Running

JULY 11, 2014

In 1995 Paul started a company that aimed to put art galleries online. It’s the poor quality version of HBO’s Silicon Valley. Attracting angel investment and getting ‘Valley’ respect is. Simply put, it’s not solving a real-life problem. If you haven’t seen it, don’t bother getting started.

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online.wsj.com

JULY 11, 2012

Technology. Personal Technology. TECHNOLOGY. Theres a power struggle underway in Silicon Valley. But Andreessens approach is also exposing a rift in Silicon Valley, where a group of young and relatively untested entrepreneurs have maintained control over their rapidly growing companies. WSJ Classroom.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 9, 2016

When the legend becomes fact…print the legend” The Hollywoodization of Silicon Valley startup stories “prints legends,” but for most startups those stories are pure fiction. Joining me in SiriusXM’s studio in New York were: Drew Silverstein , co-founder and CEO of the music technology venture Amper Music.

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Agile VC

OCTOBER 17, 2011

The ’90s saw broader adoption by the middle class but even in 1995 only 28% of US households had a computer (US Census / Pegasus Research). Im a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned East Coast VC. In the ’80s a home computer was the preserve of wealthy and upper middle class families. Author howerl. Read More ».

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Reid Hoffman

MAY 16, 2020

The biggest happened much earlier in my career, in 1995.”. I’m sure it sounds unbelievable today, but in 1995, Fujitsu was a much bigger company than Apple in those days. Because of the Internet — and especially because of the World Wide Web — things were starting to move very quickly in Silicon Valley in 1995.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Technology cycles have become a treadmill, and for startups to survive they need to be on a continuous innovation cycle. To turn your company’s stock into cash, you engaged a top-notch investment bank (Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs) and/or their Silicon Valley compatriots (Hambrecht & Quist, Montgomery Securities, Robertson Stephens).

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

What makes this tricky is that markets evolve, and an innovative technology or business model can transform a normal market into a Glengarry Glen Ross market. If O’Reilly had that same insight in 1995, it could have been an amazing blitzscaling opportunity. What is the responsibility of the winners?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 13, 2011

The $30 billion trade surplus in advanced technology products that America enjoyed just one decade ago has now become a $56 billion deficit. In fact, between 1995 and 2005, these same immigrants founded over 50 percent of the venture-backed technology companies in Silicon Valley, and are some of the key venture capitalists there as well.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2011

Is this tech bubble as broad as the 1995-2000 dot.com bubble – no. While labeled the “dot.com” bubble, valuations went crazy across a wide range of technology sectors including telecommunications, enterprise software and biotech, not just the Internet. They finance companies that invest in new technologies, new ideas and new products.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 8, 2011

For its first few decades Silicon Valley was content flying under the radar of Washington politics. It wasn’t until Fairchild and Intel were almost bankrupted by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers in the early 1980’s that they formed Silicon Valley’s first lobbying group. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital.

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Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 20, 2013

The small team, building a brand-new product, out-innovating complacent incumbents…not only is the experience fresh and exciting, it also focuses on the things most founders love—especially technical ones: Solving interesting problems, developing new technologies, devising a unique strategy.

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Seeing Both Sides

SEPTEMBER 15, 2015

Are Israeli companies on the verge of developing a repeatable playbook to scale their companies and become market leaders, not just acquisition fodder for the Silicon Valley giants? After all, Israeli entrepreneurs are known to be tenacious and eager to tackle complex technological and entrepreneurial challenges. We think so.

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Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

JANUARY 30, 2017

George Gilder said in 1995: “Without immigration over the last 50 years, I would estimate that U.S. He said that in 1995. In the early 80’s before the personal computer, and more broadly, the rapid innovation of micro-chip technology, the USA economy was in a tailspin. Technology saved us.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 19, 2019

Andy Rachleff co-founded the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital in 1995. In 2005, he retired to focus on giving back, beginning by teaching technology entrepreneurship courses at Stanford, becoming a trustee at the University of Pennsylvania (which he attended undergrad), and funding cancer research with his wife.

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