Sunday, April 03, 2011

Owning Equity, Owning House

Image representing Chris Dixon as depicted in ...Image via CrunchBase
Chris Dixon: Eric Ries: a downturn will come in the next few years (most likely not a true revenue/profit downturn but early stage valuation + coolness downturn) ..... one of the worst things happening now is that companies lie to employees and only tell them the # of shares they own and not the % they own ...... the 21st century will be about convincing people that they should think about owning part of their employer the same way people in the 20th century wanted to own their house ...... the idea of creating a stock exchange where when you bought stocks you were force to hold them 4-5 years ...... he was probably the smartest and most interesting person I've heard in years ...... us "liberals" (me, Eric, Fred Wilson) who believe that hedge fund managers should pay the same tax rate as firefighters who run into burning buildings are in radical agreement about increasing the carried interest tax. Unfortunately every other VC seems to disagree with us. Looks like we lost this one and so need to move on. +1 for aristocrats. ..... ) being more scientific about how to help these companies succeed on less capital
Chris Dixon does not think we are in a bubble. Neither do I. But I was surprised to learn he also thinks we are a few years from a downturn, what I have called a mini bubble burst. It will not be like 2000 when it looked like the entire industry collapsed. But there will be plenty of winnowing out.

Lesson: build a real business. You do need revenues and profits. Not right away, but you have a few years max. And raise your next round before the downturn. That is what Marc Andreessen told the Twitter crew before the Great Recession: "A storm is coming."
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