Down in the Valley

摘要

As if waking from a dream, silicon valley has suddenly realized that the collapsing economy means trouble for tech companies, too. Especially at risk are the new startups created in the wake of the last dotcom crash in 2001. The signal traits of these Web 2.0 companies are cutesy logos, odd-sounding names-Twitter, Zooomr, Digg, Ning, Loopt-and flimsy business plans based on a vague notion of luring millions of people to free Web sites and someday selling advertisements. Most lose money. Some have raised enough venture-capital funding to survive for a year or more. Some may be able to raise more from venture backers, albeit at onerous terms. But many are going to flame out. The correction is long overdue. Over the past two years, valuations on some Valley startups have soared to ridiculous levels. Facebook, the social-networking site, last year raised money at a $15 billion valuation despite being profitless and only three years old. Ning, another social-networking site, has raised $104 million and was most recently valued at $500 million. (Cofounder Marc Andreessen, a Valley veteran, said earlier this year he was raising money to ride out a coming "nuclear winter") Slide, a maker of software widgets that let Facebook users "Poke" and "SuperPoke" each other, earlier this year raised $50 million at a $550 million valuation. Just as in the original dotcom boom of the late 1990s, Valley types claimed these valuations were perfectly reasonable, and insisted there was no bubble. Those who have raised war chests remain upbeat. "Not to sound obnoxious, but this downturn could be good for us," says Max Levchin, founder and CEO of Slide, in San Francisco. "Some of our competitors are going to go out of business."