Marc Andreesen has a blog now. Read it why dontcha! He started out a little slow but hit his stride in no time at all. Yes, I’m complimenting the arguable father of the modern web. So that means I’d like to comment on several of his posts. In one post of my own! I’m quite efficient in that way.

Bubble-Mania: It’s Bubble-licious!

Last year a younger friend brought up the notion that there’s a New Bubble: the Web2.0 bubble. I scoffed: “Internet bubble? no way!”… mainly cos I’d been through the “Web1.0″ bubble and saw none of the same madness. However, I had been fearing larger and greater bubbles (financial industry/oil price-based/housing ones).

I think in my own case, my attention to “bubbles” was not fostered in the 2001-03 timeframe. Rather, it was the 1991-3 recession which made me a bubble-fearin’ joe. As a result I became overly bubble-sensitive myself… and this was only reinforced by my armchair predictions of the April 2000 Nasdaq crash (as well as Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait but that’s another story).

However, in the last six months I managed to think my way out of it. Why?

Well, partly it was because I got sick of listening to the fear-mongering negativity of all the armchair financial advisors and market analysts out there who doom-and-gloomed on one hand, and said “buy my newsletter” on the other. Fear, like sex, sells.

But also, it was because I grew tired of being “scared” myself. Marc tackles this in his own post on the topic, which its advisable to read if you—like I was—can be prone to thinking that we’re headed for Yet-Another-Bubble-Oh-My (and you’d like some seasoned advice):

On Wall Street, investors who have this habit are known as “perma-bears” and generally are predicting the imminent collapse of the stock market. This habit keeps them from being fully invested. Sure, they’re well protected during the occasional crash of 1929 or 2000, but by and large they massively underperform their peers who take advantage of the fact that most years, the economy grows, and the market goes up. They have disappointing careers and die unhappy and bitter[...]

If you’re going to listen to people who predict bubbles or crashes, you have to be ready to stay completely out of the market—the stock market, and the technology industry—almost every year of your life.

This pretty much says it all but I’ll add my two cents in a paraphrased truism: “Those who live in the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The Art Of Hiring Redux

Should be that a founder like Marc would talk about the art of hiring, which I spoke about myself from “the other side” in a previous posting.

I like what he has to say in it, mainly cos it rings true (intuitively) as well as matches my own experience in small company/startup situations. He suggest you hire people based on drive, curiosity and ethics. Furthermore he notes that you should be organized and have an adaptive approach when in the actual hiring process. I won’t belabor this commentary, except to quote a favorite passage:

People used to say, back when IBM owned the industry: never hire someone straight out of IBM. First, let them go somewhere else and fail. Then, once they’ve realized the real world is not like IBM, hire them and they’ll be great.

And remember, an awful lot of people who have been at hugely successful companies were just along for the ride.

I like this quote mainly cos it reminds me of what Jamie Zawinski wrote once about Netscape itself and why he left (post-AOL):

[Y]ou can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company.

Again, I think that says it all. The question for you, gentle reader, now, is simple: what kind of employee are you?