The Justice Department, as usual, doesn't understand the issues
beyond their immediate objectives and the political pressures and
costs and benefits of the political games they're aware of playing.
Five years ago, the dominant startup business model in Silicon Valley was
to announce your product and go public.*
It was a nice model, but not only have the high-tech buzzwords changed a bit,
the "Go Public" phase for many businesses has been replaced with
"If you're in hardware, sell out to Cisco."
"If you're in software or services, sell out to Microsoft."
Breaking up Microsoft into two or three of pieces may not bother this
in the long run; doing more damage almost certainly will.
But in the short to medium run, it's not only affecting current sellouts
that aren't fairly far along, it's really impeding the
expectation that you can sell out to Microsoft, which makes it more
risky to start the startup, and difficult to get venture funding,
and that slows down the engines that drive the whole Valley.
One friend of mine has already lost her job because of it
(she'd been there two weeks, and they didn't get second-round VC financing,
so they dumped most of their people. On the other hand,
she had a new job by afternoon, at one of the other startups she'd
interviewed.)
~~~~~~
[* "Go to Menlo Park. Shake a tree. A venture capitalist will fall out.
Wave your hands and say complex high-tech words. The VC will give you $4M
dollars.
Hire 20 people, publish lots of hype, stir for six months, and go public.
Your IPO stock will inflate rapidly, and you'll become Mozillionaires.
Your share is $30M dollars. Go to Menlo Park. Climb a tree."]
Thanks!
Bill
Bill Stewart, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
