If Web 1.0’s Kryptonite Was the Bust, Web 2.0 Kryptonite Was the Grind

The very fact that the words "dipshit $40m companies" were ever uttered with a straight face suggests to me that we all <i>completely lost our fucking minds</i>.<p>A $40m company is an amazing achievement for anyone and I can't imagine the level of neurosis and inferiority that would make you consider that a "dipshit" accomplishment. Building a billion-dollar company is a once in a generation thing in any industry, none of us should forget that.<p>People talk about "riding a wave" as if it's about being in the right place at the right time. Ask a surfer and you'll get the truth - riding a big wave is about getting up really early and paddling like a motherfucker all day into wave after wave, until eventually you get a big one. If you just sit there waiting for a big wave to come, you're just going to get drowned by it.<p>The whole economy has been a great big childish bubble for the last decade or more. It has burst, which is great. Credit is cheap, rents are cheap, labour is cheap, the incumbents are panicked and markets are restructuring. Pick a wave and paddle for it - by the time you can see that it's a big one, you'll have missed it.

Lacey may be mistaking her circumstances -- at TC -- and those of her main subjects -- like Rose -- for a general weariness.<p>There's no shortage of twentysomethings, far from tired, with the added advantage of being able to take for granted everything prior companies exhausted themselves proving out.

A humane piece of lamenting prose that managed to make feel sympathetic toward Kevin Rose <i>and</i> Michael Arrington. A first. Read it for the 5th paragraph, and the last.

I think this is where hacker-built businesses have a unique opportunity. They're well versed with the development grind. Though the media company grind is very different, mainly through the necessary inclusion of many more people involved, hackers know how to overcome a bug and solve problems. Since the problem is on their end (the grind) as opposed to external forces (a bubble) these businesses have more of a fighting chance then the dot com companies that dried up quickly and painfully.

"... and with the right kind of eyes, you an almost see the high water mark. That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." -- Hunter S. Thompson<p><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zI_me2X2hA" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zI_me2X2hA</a>