The Naked man and innovation of internet

To regain the courage and imagination of the night naked man, don't let the game of capital operation kill the courage of the IT people who dare to dream.

The recent rereading of the "Night Shift Naked Man" (the nudist in the Late Shift) is still interesting and close to the current global stock market innovation-high atmosphere. It describes the 1996-1999, Silicon Valley surging entrepreneurial boom.

At that time, creativity and talent difficult to ask, the most worthless is money. The company generously offered stock options and devised a variety of tricks to keep employees at work overtime, including meals, shower facilities, laundry for employees, and dentists to help employees see their teeth regularly. At that time, every week a star company stock listing (IPO) or be bought at a high price, once the deal, the cost of the front is small pediatrics.

These money games are nothing, but it makes people's guts and desires be magnified infinitely. A program designer who worked overtime at the company in the evening even took off his whole body clothes and walked around the company as a king in his new dress, and was finally sued by a female colleague who was also working overtime in the office. This is the origin of the book's name.

When I interviewed Cisco in 2000, I chatted with their PR manager, the man who had previously been a journalist in Washington. I asked him, "What do people in Washington and Silicon Valley have in common?" His answer was good: "They all thought they were the center of the world." ”

People in Washington have the political power to master the Dream Power in Silicon Valley. Psychology has the "Baby Infinity", as a child, everyone's volunteer is when the president, astronauts, inventors or the rich, as the age becomes bigger, the dream becomes smaller, even humble.

I would disagree that some of the media later used "greed" or "arrogance" to describe the period of Silicon Valley and the Internet industry, it was a superficial criticism of the trees that did not see the forest, and I did not agree with what John Doer, the VCs, said, "The greatest wealth that human beings have ever legitimately created", which is too narrow a view of American Western history.

Silicon Valley is the cradle of the American dream of the past 40 years, it makes people return to the "Baby infinite" state, dare to dream dare to action. If even some of the unrestrained ideas, people pay the bill, which means that more good ideas have been funded to start. Many of the new ventures, which rode scooters and pets in the office, went bust, but they also stood in the emerging Fortune 500 companies such as ebay, Google and Yahoo. Fortune500.

Take the media industry as an example, the 1990 's is the financial magazine surging, especially in the United States, whether it is new or revised, from "Wired", "Business2.0", "Fast Company", "upside", "the Industry Standard", " Inc. to "Red Herring", although green but fresh and unique, so that "Fortune", "Forbes" and "Businessweek" appear senile.

It must be a time for young journalists to collectively "Baby infinity." Although their star companies and those who get rich overnight have nothing to do with themselves; Even after 2000 years, these rookie financial magazines have been downsized, sold or closed, but I suspect that the initial team that founded "Business2.0" , certainly not in the future to sell it to "Fortune", although eventually forced to do so.

Since Google's stock market in August 2004, and Apple's ipod after the big sale, the Silicon Valley recovery, the global science and technology industry to establish a trend, all over the stock market began to reverse, but so far over three years, the technology industry reports are focused on Google and Apple, as if only the two companies understand innovation ; and Google, ebay and Yahoo, the biggest VC and underwriter in Silicon Valley, have a string of potential start-ups that squeeze their heads into the boardroom of the three companies and persuade them to buy their own companies in exchange for these star companies ' stock as an exit mechanism.

The rookie of Flickr, MySpace, Skype and YouTube have all opted for acquisitions, and since Google's listing, there have been no cases of star-networking IPOs in the United States, with only a bunch of cases being acquired by star Internet companies. Even the old news that Yahoo may have been bought by Microsoft or merged with MSN, which has passed from 1999 to now, has not stimulated any imagination.

This reminds me of the first time I went to Silicon Valley in 1996, when the network equipment industry was on the head, Cisco, Bay Network and Ascend, the three leading groups, followed by hundreds of small companies with Sprint, very vigorous. By the time the Cisco family was alone in 1998, a pile of new ventures had shifted to: studying what Cisco would do next, then selling it to the first step, doing business very well, but without originality, more like what Wall Street people did.

So don't tell me how cool the iphone is, I'm sure it will sell, and Steve Jobs is a marketing genius that has been proven 30 years ago. I am more concerned about whether the Internet company can be listed smoothly, although not much research on it, but a new company from scratch, certainly more than a continuous best-selling products appear in the old company, to enlarge the courage and desire of entrepreneurs, more impetus effect.

Yes, the apples are old. In contrast to IBM's "think" slogan, it shouted "Think different", now, it is time for someone to come up with "thought XXX". We don't need to have a guy in the office naked in the evening, but at least a little bit of that courage and imagination.