Nice article in today's FT about the sucess of opentable.com's IPO: http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/05/a-taste-of-that-old-dotcom-fizz/

This really backs up everything I've been hearing over here on the West Coast - as long as the business model is robust, there's no reason why any tech company wouldn't be getting the backing it needs - it's great to see that Wall St seems to be agreeing.  The consensus seems to be that this downturn isn't hurting tech startups anything like what was seen 10 years ago.  As Ian pointed out in his post about the VCs we met this week (http://www.saltirefoundation.com/cs/blogs/fellow/archive/2009/05/21/venture-capital-silicon-valley-style.aspx) investments are happening and although things might move slower than a year ago, there's still cash available for the right idea.

I had a great chat today with folks in Sun about how time and again it's the startups that cause the headaches for the Gorillas of tech industry.  This is really relevant in the Cloud Computing space where new players are appearing almost daily.  I've been spending some time today checking out one of these Cloud Startups who have been around for a year or so but are suddenly now being discussed by the Gartner analysts as the "ones to watch".  It's exciting to see how a group of people can get together and with some original thinking can really make a game-changing move in a young industry - even when the big players are throwing resources at coming up with a solution.

We discussed Malcolm Gladwell's books at Babson but his article in last week's New Yorker really sums up the startup potential:

“David’s victory over Goliath, in the Biblical account, is held to be an anomaly. It was not. Davids win all the time [...] [when they] choose not to play by Goliath’s rules [...].”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/05/11/090511fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Hope everyone enjoys their holiday weekend at home, and memorial day weekend over here.  I'm heading up to Lake Tahoe to climb some hills (http://www.tahoebackcountry.net/hiking/desolation/tallac.htm).

Neil