Silicon Valley VCs Really Like Themselves

from the I'm-good-enough,-I'm-smart-enough,-and-dammit-I'm-rich-enough dept

Red Herring reports that the latest Churchill Club meeting of VCs in Silicon Valley felt more like a fraternity meeting or sports pep rally as all these VCs kept patting themselves on the back saying that no one could possibly challenge the supremacy of Northern California's venture capital community. If this reads like a recipe for disaster, you might be right. It sounds a lot like they're saying no one will ever match them because of Silicon Valley's past success. Certainly, there is a critical mass of money, brains, and services in this area - but that also makes people content with the way things are and makes it easy to miss important trends and changes. It means they experiment less, and take less risks. In the end, that means they might very well miss whatever "the next big thing" is. For example, one thing I've noticed around here is this weird insistence on the idea that the only way to start a company is to raise venture funds. Obviously, the venture capitalists themselves buy into that view (and actively promote it), but that may cause them to miss a bigger trend of ways to bootstrap companies without paying the VC toll.