Don't believe everything you read, and watch out for what section of the paper you read it in. Those are the two thoughts I have for you this morning, as I add my voice to the disapproving chorus of those reacting to the rather silly story in the Style section of the Times. Alive and Well in Silicon Alley purports to document the rise of New York's media technology sector once again - and damnit, the wonderful "style" of those go-go 90s we all miss so damned badly. So cool. But as Jason Chervokas says this morning, "if Silicon Alley's going down that road again, well, I've got a start-up to sell you, online pizza delivery, $100 million valuation. It could happen."
Great line, and it refers to an actual company that (successfully) made the funding rounds in 1996 in New York. Which should tell you something. After the Netscape IPO in 1995, the gold rush enveloped the formerly anti-entrepreneur ruling class of New York. Silicon Alley 1.0 was a gold rush town straight out of HBO's virulent Deadwood - a shoot 'em up frontier village filled with con men, hustlers, snake oil salesmen and all the hookers, hangers-on, and profiteers you could possibly fit into lofts and cube farms from the Hudson to the East River. It was all great fun, I have to admit - oh except for the heartache, the bankruptcies, and the thousands of employees left with stock options that retained as much value as Confederate paper circa 1865. Nor was it much fun for all the late investors, for would-be angels, the amateur money that flooded the town looking for the next eBay, the next Amazon.
Still and all, there was a creative spirit that was eventually welded to the greatest graduate business school of them all - the mean streets of a cruel market - and I know it was a fascinating period in my own professional life. Ideas were everywhere, even if countless ne'er-do-well trust fund babies spent other people's money on high-end vodka, cocaine, and Super Bowl ads. [When I found myself featured in a full-color spread - clothed - in Penthouse magazine next to a certain notorious party boy and his dog, and two pages away from an explicit montage of two, er, Vikings of some sort ... well, I knew the jig was up: the for-sale sign went up quickly at good old @NY].
As a board member of NYSIA, I spent a couple of hours at the our old haunt at 55 Broad Street this week and schmoozed with its chief Bruce Bernstein - who has more staying power than any dozen start-ups - and we talked a bit about the buzz in the air. It's not the money really, although there have been a few nice exits, primarily of companies that ran cheap and have been plugging along for years now, some of them before the catastrophe of 9/11. It's more the creativity - lots of ideas, lots of open discussion, some collaboration. And then there's Google and Yahoo - why did they move their big sales units to New York? Easy: it's where big media lives and they want to get the big campaign money. And they probably will: that's business.
Which the Times Styles article clearly was not. Back in the day, Jason and I were first attracted to the business story and to its place in New York's history; as he says:
...first and foremost we took seriously the ideas that New York could be an important hothouse for the invention of new media technology businesses and that the boys in Silicon Valley could learn something from New York's media-centered approach to technology. We also believed that media technology start-ups could have a major financial impact on a city that hadn't had a new home grown industry since movies left in the 1920s.
The kernel of this remained during the bad years, but the explosion of the phony bubble we had predicted accurately - but too early, of course - killed thousands and thousands of jobs. Now we're getting photos of pool tables again, and descriptions of techie wardrobes. Who cares? At 55 Broad, I bumped into John Tepper Marlin, the economist who did some terrific reports on New York's job growth and job decline during and after the bubble. Now out on his own and working on some project, he told me that the job numbers are just starting the creep up again. This is a good thing, real evidence of an important - and still young - sector coming back from the dead in town. The Times didn't bother to report this. In short, I'll agree with Fred Wilson's take:
I don't like the name Silicon Alley either and never did.
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?
Entrepreneurs are building interesting companies using technology and brains and imagination.
That's all there is to it. And if there's a story in that, let's put it where it belongs in the business section or the technology section, not the style section.
There is a business story there, and I'll be paying more attention myself in the coming months. But I have to chuckle. This morning I noticed that Jason Calacanis, our old bete noir from the 90s, is in fighting spirit and spitting at my old partner (and me as well) after Jason's initial blog post. Here's the Calacanis take:
I love the fact that I beat them so bad that Jason still can't get over it. That is what competition is about--getting inside the other guys head to the point at which they take their mind off the game. I *tortured* these guys for five years and ten years later they are still throwing stones.
I think Jason has let L.A. get into his DNA, infecting his viewpoint - it's a very non-Brooklyn sentiment, it seems to me: unkind, inaccurate, and all-hype. You know, post 9/11 in this town and after the Iraq debacle, bragging about torture - even in jest - ain't cool. We like to keep it real around here (let's hope the Times is listening). Hey Jason, time to get out of the cabana and come back to a real city. Where, it seems, there is some interesting growth - in business, not in style.
UPDATE: Man, so much passion for the 90s. Read the comments via Chervokas, Wilson, and Calacanis as well as Steve Gilliard's acerbic memories of the boom - here's a handy list of links via Pamela Parker, an ex-@NYer who proved one thing: Jason and I knew talent, at least. Her post is here.
- Jason Chervokas - Style over Substance in Silicon Alley
- Tom Watson: Bulletin: Silicon Alley is still Dead
- Jason Calacanis: 10 years later... lessons from the SAR/@NY Battle
- Fred Wilson: Alley Wag and Revisionist History, Calacanis Style
- Brouhaha: Back Alley Fighting
- Steve Gilliard: Warning, bullshit alert
- i-boy: Fight Club: Silicon Alley Style
- PR Differently
- Daly Om: Silicon Alley vs. Silicon Alley
It's a good debate, and I'm glad the initial Chervokas post touched things off. Meantime, I re-read the Times story and you know, it's not such a bad business piece - a bit simple perhaps, badly labeled and positoned, but the story is well-told, in general - there is something brewing again in town.
