Month: December 2007

VC Loses Weight, Music Loses a Legend

SV is buzzing about former Mobius VC Heidi Roizen’s new vanity music CD Skinny Songs. Since leaving the investment game, Heidi decided to dedicate herself to losing weight (don’t you wish you had the time and money to do that?), but was dissatisfied with her exercise music. So she turned “songwriter”, crafting lyrics like “For years we were together, every Saturday night,/we’d go out dancin’, you’d hold me in tight,/but you were unforgiving and you wouldn’t let me grow/Now I can’t put you on – but I can’t let you go” (Skinny Jeans) and “I use wills of steel, at every meal, to control my every bite/And with my xray vision I can see without a doubt/There’s a skinny girl inside me, I’ve just got to let her out” (The Incredible Shrinking Woman – isn’t that the name of an old scifi movie too?). She didn’t write the music, sing, play, or produce of course, since she doesn’t know how, but she does know how to fund a project…

Meanwhile, Dan Fogelberg, a true artist, died of cancer yesterday, and the world got a little bit dimmer somehow. Dan was one of my first strong musical influences along with Christopher Parkening (I learned to play guitar from Parkening’s classical guitar book and no, I don’t use a pick because classical guitarist use their fingers!). I played and sang Stars and Be on Your Way while other kids were listening to disco.

I haven’t played his songs in close to twenty years I’m ashamed to say. When I have time, I spend it on my own compositions (and yes, I write the music, lyrics and sing and play, but my husband does all the digital production, and no, it’s not a business, it’s just for fun). But even after all these years, I still remember them.

So I pulled out the guitar last evening. The fire was warm and so was the music. I sang Longer while my husband listened and my daughter drew. Our cat Tiger came over from where he was sleeping, jumped up next to me and leaned his head against the guitar body.

Longer than there’ve been fishes in the ocean
Higher than any bird ever flew
Longer than there’ve been stars up in the heavens
I’ve been in love with you

Stronger than any mountain cathedral
Truer than any tree ever grew
Deeper than any forest primeval
I am in love with you

I’ll bring fire in the winters
You’ll send showers in the springs
We’ll fly through the falls and summers
With love on our wings

Through the years as the fire starts to mellow
Burning lines in the book of our lives
Though the binding cracks and the pages start to yellow
I’ll be in love with you
I’ll be in love with you

Thank you Dan for your wonderful music. You inspired a young girl to pick up a pen and a guitar and sing for the pure joy of it. I know your heavenly debut will be wonderful. But we will miss you here.

Silicon Valley’s Middle Class Dilemma

Almost everyone I know likes to claim that they are “middle class”. Yes, I know I live in Los Gatos, a nice little town that in many ways resembles Santa Monica or La Jolla. We’ve got a great library, a Christmas parade (I once marched in it with my kids as “California pioneers”), a nice neat downtown, several great parks, and what is generally considered a very good school system (although my daughter decided to short-circuit a slow educational malaise for Ohlone College after 7th grade). Yet we’re all “middle class”. Not wealthy. If pressed, someone might say that local resident Steve Wozniak is probably wealthy, even though he eats at Bakers Square during pitches.

But wealthy? No, most everyone I know (even several VCs) don’t feel wealthy. Oh, they hope to be someday. But with $5,000/mo mortgages, insurance and taxes going into Silicon Valley tract houses that went for $30,000 new in 1967, they definitely feel middle class. And scared they’ll lose it all if something – anything – goes wrong.

The problem with definitions of “middle class” is that they don’t take into account debt load and age. Many people who appear affluent in expensive areas of the country have very high debt load, dominated by mortgages. The only reason they survive is that good old mortgage deduction on their taxes.

People buy houses based on their current income and debt (unless, of course, they fell into the subprime disaster – note that many people who qualified for better ended up with these mortgages because brokers made more off of them). What if they lose their job, or their medical insurance tops out and they have to go out-of-pocket on medical bills? In this case, the fixed asset value of their house doesn’t help much, unless they can unload it at a profit fast, because once the debt load rises or you can’t validate the old mortgage with a paystub, you can’t refi and pull money out of that asset. But you still have to pay mortgage, taxes, maintenance and all that stuff. And in costly areas like Silicon Valley, that adds up real fast.

And finally, if you’re over 40, there’s a good chance you’ll not get as good a job, pay-wise, than you had when you were younger. We see it all the time here in Silicon Valley. It has nothing to do with education – I see very educated people here past 40 saying they’re “retired” rather than admit they have no job prospects. It has nothing to do with connections or talent – many of these people have established track records of products and successes and everybody knows it. It has everything to do with age. Nobody wants an employee over 40 because 1) the medical costs go up – I paid $70/mo for a 20-something in my engineering group in one of my startups and he had a major car accident that cost Kaiser plenty, while several 40-something engineers had monthly medical costs 10-times that and never got sick – and 2) old guys and gals aren’t “cool”, and investors and the few old survivor executives only want to be surrounded by youth to feel young.

Maybe that’s where the real Silicon Valley “wealth gap” lies. The super-rich winners believe they are immortal and beautiful (even if they are old toads) because they are rich, and only wish to deal with others like them (the current minimum in venture circles these days is about $100M) and they use the young to flatter their egos and not necessarily to line their pockets. The people who made them their successes – the generation of hard-working scientists, engineers and businesspeople that created the wealth – are disposable because their very presence is a reminder that the “wealthy” got there because of them.

So what happens to the guy who made that open source project succeed, or that gal who got those semiconductor patents together? They’re “retired”. Put out to pasture. There are no second chances in Silicon Valley.

The only bright light in this little meditation is that we should be happy they still use “retired” in the conventional sense, and not the Blade Runner sense.

Cyberbullying on the Internet

The Lori Drew case has hit the media this week, and the reaction is fairly universal – how could a mother behave in such a shameless narcissistic evil manner to drive a young girl to suicide? The anonymous use of the Internet and MySpace to bully this child provides the techno-grist for over-the-top analysis by doyennes of housewife journalism like Judith Warner (admittedly, I do like her style) who draws rather shaky lines between this nasty criminal weirdo and “helicopter parents” who dote on their offspring. Unfortunately, this trivializes and distracts from the centerpiece of this drama. Powerful technology like the Internet can be used by amoral predators to hunt down victims as efficiently and rapidly as normal folks use it to hunt for the best HDTV bargain.

The “good old days” mantra (oh sure, bullying didn’t happen before the Internet? I’ve got a bridge to sell you too) that pops up during this public debate is relevant only in the sense that the way we interact in society is vastly changed and enhanced by technology. Social networks like MySpace and FaceBook and business networks like LinkedIn are poor substitutes for real friendship, collegiality and love. But what if you don’t have any real friendship, collegiality and love? For whatever reason one would prefer to choose (consumerism, individualism, globalism, …), these businesses would not exist and flourish economically if there weren’t so many isolated people out there looking for validation of self. While technology like the Internet facilitates new forms of social interaction, it is not the sole catalyst for such interaction. That responsibility lies within ourselves and the way we treat others in the real world.

The major lament about the Internet is that it has no “controls” to prevent criminal behavior. Consider that the Internet (Arpanet for those oldsters who remember) was designed at a time when networks were few and conduct was scrupulously monitored. In the 1970’s, I knew quite a few people who were very careful with their postings for fear of losing their prized university or corporate accounts. However, balancing this was the belief that academic freedom was equally important, and that disputed statements should be heard and debated – not suppressed – in other words “Cui peccare licet peccat minus” (Ovid).

But in the real world, we also view actions separately from words. When words are used to torment and destroy another person, it becomes a difficult matter of law. It forces us to look at our values and behavior. How many times have you, dear reader, met with a poison-pen email or posting notable only for its vacuous viciousness and then actually met the writer and found him or her indifferent or unaware of the venom dripping from the words? I actually have on occasion, and it is very disconcerting.

Anonymity on the Internet has always been a bit of a misnomer. The Internet provides for much better tracking and record-keeping than sending an old-fashioned letter and is far less regulated than phone conversations. Cookies and behavioral search give businesses like MySpace a “snapshot” on buying habits and trends worth billions of dollars. People who use these “free” services may believe they are “untraceable” but the entire focus of the business is one of tracing a caricature of the consumer. Identifying users in criminal or civil actions is simply incidental to their business, but as the RIAA actions demonstrate, the information is available.

DNA analysis has revolutionized identification of criminals, but that hasn’t stopped all crime. The same goes for Internet tracking. Technology changes, but the desire for justice is timeless.