Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
sec.online.wsj.com
Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
1–10 of 104 posts
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#2Voted up because the premise of the article is interesting. But I disagree with the statement that Sarbanes-Oxley is killing entrepreneurship, so I'd like to hear comments about that from the entrepreneurs here. I'm also not sure that it is a sign of failure that many start-ups sell themselves to an existing big company rather than doing an IPO. It seems to me (again I would like to hear from the entrepreneurs here about this) that the whole point of starting a start-up is to have FLEXIBILITY to decide later how to cash out the business. Some like to sell to one company, some like to sell shares to the public at large, and some stay closely held for a long time. To each their own, methinks.
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#3Pure subterfuge. A thinly veiled attempt to justify tax cuts and deregulation. AIG was killed by accounting? Try again. SOX hasn't killed the IPO, it's just made the hurdle higher and that's ok. IPOs are about consistent revenue generation - most of the firms of Web 1.0 didn't have it and didn't deserve to IPO. The WSJ has truly been compromised by Murdoch. NYTimes editorial on the death of the WSJ: http://tinyurl.com/6f879h
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#4Voted up because the premise of the article is interesting. But I disagree with the statement that Sarbanes-Oxley is killing entrepreneurship, so I'd like to hear comments about that from the entrepreneurs here. I'm also not sure that it is a sign of failure that many start-ups sell themselves to an existing big company rather than doing an IPO. It seems to me (again I would like to hear from the entrepreneurs here a…
I know a CEO of an Internet company that planned on doing an IPO in 2008. Of course the economy tanked so it's not happening.
He told me that SOX required the company to have auditing/traceability and controls for everything. This meant they quit using any software as a service applications, they shut down IM, they have to keep track of everything on every machine, banned a whole list of applications that would interfere with SOX (iTunes, file sharing, and music app), etc.
They had to hire lawyers, more accountants, consulting firms. He told me they were looking at > 10m to comply. And that doesn't count lost productivity of having to act like a draconian big ass company where they had to have design docs for everything they do, detailed project plans, get rid of the tools they use (as listed above), etc.
In other words to go IPO now you give up agility, spend more money, and become less productive.
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#5Voted up because the premise of the article is interesting. But I disagree with the statement that Sarbanes-Oxley is killing entrepreneurship, so I'd like to hear comments about that from the entrepreneurs here. I'm also not sure that it is a sign of failure that many start-ups sell themselves to an existing big company rather than doing an IPO. It seems to me (again I would like to hear from the entrepreneurs here a…
But clearly something has changed. FTA:
"According to the National Venture Capital Association, in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986."
It's probably more complex than that, or he'd have hammered the point a lot more. I'd love to see a graph, for instance.
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#6Yeah! That's my evergreen state. Watch out, Houston; you're next.
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#7Yeah! That's my evergreen state. Watch out, Houston; you're next.
This is argues the federal government, not Washington State, is killing Silicon Valley and all tech centers like it.
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#8This article is heavily biased, makes ridiculously exaggerated claims, and bends statistics to its will.
The computer boom came about because of capital gains tax cuts, huh? What a joke.
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#9Voted up because the premise of the article is interesting. But I disagree with the statement that Sarbanes-Oxley is killing entrepreneurship, so I'd like to hear comments about that from the entrepreneurs here. I'm also not sure that it is a sign of failure that many start-ups sell themselves to an existing big company rather than doing an IPO. It seems to me (again I would like to hear from the entrepreneurs here a…
But clearly something has changed. FTA: "According to the National Venture Capital Association, in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986." It's probably more complex than that, or he'd have hammered the point a lot more. I'd love to see a graph, for instance.
I'm sure it went something like this:
1)Give the number from this economically disastrous year,
2)find the other years with the highest number of IPO's and list them.
3)Use this ridiculously skewed comparison to prove your point
Re: Washington Is Killing Silicon Valley
#10Voted up because the premise of the article is interesting. But I disagree with the statement that Sarbanes-Oxley is killing entrepreneurship, so I'd like to hear comments about that from the entrepreneurs here. I'm also not sure that it is a sign of failure that many start-ups sell themselves to an existing big company rather than doing an IPO. It seems to me (again I would like to hear from the entrepreneurs here a…
But clearly something has changed. FTA: "According to the National Venture Capital Association, in all of 2008 there have been just six companies that have gone public. Compare that with 269 IPOs in 1999, 272 in 1996, and 365 in 1986." It's probably more complex than that, or he'd have hammered the point a lot more. I'd love to see a graph, for instance.
"I'd love to see a graph, for instance."
Tufte in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information points out that the Wall Street Journal is one of the least likely newspapers to display anything in a graph. Indeed, it would be a lot easier for visually minded people like me to check the Journal's arguments if they were displayed in bivariate plots more often.