It's a safe bet that folks will be mixing it up on the Net for a long while to come. After all, plenty of smart people are still getting into the radio business. The battles may get tougher, and as they do, it will be the best trained among us who profit the most. Venture capitalists can vet business plans as rigorously as they want, but they still need to give that money away. There are no funding-surplus stores where they can lay off unused investment capital the way the Pentagon peddles outdated gas masks.
Skepticism is healthy, in business as in war.
Moreover, if venture-capital purse strings do tighten, it's relatively safe to assume that business plans presented by people with tangible qualifications, such as an M.B.A., will have an edge over business plans presented by people with, say, nose rings. And for anybody whose entrepreneurial interests were to lie off-line, an Internet backlash could even be a bonus. The Internet boom may have brought a feast of venture-capital money to the table, but there's no law that says you need to be a Web site to take some of it home. Remember also that when World War II finally did end, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were suddenly dumped out of the service and into the workforce. A pent-up labor shortage, the optimistic postwar economy, and, of course, the GI Bill helped the country absorb these extra workers.