Jason Calacanis is getting spanked for thumping his chest in public and talking trash. Not sure if he is right or wrong, though I think he is finally getting the well deserved media attention, for building Weblogs Inc. Back in Bubble 1.0 days he was quite the man about town, and well he did have great parties. I attended one of them, but then life got in the way. I also used to read @NY.
Silicon Alley Reporter and @NY ….. blasts from the past. The only one who hasn’t done well it seems is my buddy Miles who owns fantastic but fatalistic domain, SiliconAlley.com. Interesting trip down memory lane, for I was there to see all the drama.
One thing which I found funny was Fred Wilson’s line…
Why do we need some wannabe name to describe something that is going on in every major city in our country and increasingly every major city in the world?
Why funny? Because at one time Wilson used to use the phrase Silicon Alley. I had interviewed him for Forbes.com. Man did Fred and his partner in Flatiron Partners, had the world on a string. But more than my own piece, I distinctly remember a story in which Wilson, talked about how Silicon Alley was different.
His office was a few blocks from the famous Double Click sign, and well he was at the epicenter of all the big deals at the time. At the time I was working for Forbes.com, and it was passed around. You could feel the boom. Forbes.com offices were a few blocks from where all the IT companies were based, and we thought, New York life, technology and media… all in middle of a supermodel safari…. damn… what a wonderful world.
Tripping down the memory lane, I looked it up. I was right. Here is what Fred told The Industry Standard story, The New Boys Network, back in June 1998 ….
“In Silicon Valley, there’s this culture that exists that companies beget companies, management teams beget management teams,” says Wilson, a former partner at Euclid Partners. Not in New York, where money flows like water through timeworn channels in the city’s economic crust. “The venture funds that existed in New York in the 1970s and 1980s were not the right firms to service Silicon Alley,” says Wilson. “They were basically buyout shops.”
I guess, a bubble ago, Silicon Alley did feel special. Not anymore … as Fred says… its happening everywhere. In Mumbai, Shanghai and in Tel Aviv.
Photo Courtesy of The Real Deal
Hey, when we were at Computerwire in the mid-90s, our office was directly behind that sign and when it was erected it blocked the light in our sales office. So many metaphors, so little time. We started 451 Group just behind that second building on the right and you know what, we’re still here! Does that make us Alley veterans? Or is it Alley 2.0 now?
like me nick, your are an OG
I’m all for bloggers mixing it up – makes for more interesting reading! In this case, though, I think that the shift in Fred’s position may be a genuine shift in perspective, reflecting a (potential?) shift in the tech universe. I don’t quite get why, in our new distributed paradise, everything is assumed to have to happen in the Valley. I think that Fred is right, Vally or Alley, let’s leave behind the 1.0 way of thinking.