Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Irrational Exuberance?
They say “flat is the new up” and that certainly seems to be the case with the venture capital industry. Though we’ve had two consecutive quarters without an IPO and the venture market is all but frozen, VC optimism is beginning to return. The latest Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index shows a small but noteworthy uptick in the VC community’s views of the entrepreneurial environment in the San Francisco Bay Area.




Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz once argued that “the best time to invest is when people are cowering under their desks.” A pithy little adage, and one that was understood to be emblematic of the healthy optimism and patient money of the venture capital industry and its indefatigable all-trees-grow-to-heaven worldview. It loses a bit of its luster, though, when that healthy optimism and patient money are themselves cowering under the desk.