Lumping All Open Source Companies Together
from the lemming-think dept
Not all venture capitalists are like this, obviously, but some VCs do earn their reputation as being lemmings. They won't invest in something until they see other VCs are investing in the same "space" and then quickly jump into to find their own version of whatever others are investing in. Remember a year ago, when every VC firm had to find their "social networking play" to invest in? This year, it's apparently "open source companies" that are all the rage, which makes the NY Times wonder if investors are being stupid. Of course, it's completely pointless to simply lump all open source companies together into one bundle and assume that investing in them is either good or bad. These are different companies, after all, with different offerings, different strategies and different staff. Some of them may work out great, some of them will obviously fail. Looking at the space as a whole doesn't seem all that useful from a VC perspective -- when looking at the individual opportunities and their prospects does. VCs shouldn't be looking to invest in a "space" but in the individual company.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
stupid article
There's no evidence in the article that this is what's going on either -- just the journo lumping together anecdotes.
Anyway "Open Source" is just a business strategy, like choosing to write your code in Java.
[ link to this | view in thread ]