They've laid people off, quit or almost quit funding their angel portfolios, and are devoting their time to figuring out how to survive in a market that values rock-solid business plans and seasoned management over showy gestures. So they deserve a trip to the woodshed. It would get pretty crowded. After all, dot-com innovators all across America are in a funk. Stock prices have swooned, cash flows petered out and venture capital dried up.
Nobody's in double digits.
They're pulling their incubatees' IPOs like weeds in a vegetable garden. He's a hero now, but most people called him a crackpot when he purchased a bankrupt UHF station in 1970. A couple years later, though, they were calling it the deal of the decade. It took him 25 years to do it. If not, they're construed as weak, and they'll get crushed in a heartbeat.