[pritianka]

I've been in tech only 6 years and I am already bored of these cycles of VCs becoming frenetically exuberant followed by cautious times. Their advice to startups changes depending on what time it is. It's all so predictable yet people are surprised every time. Any entrepreneur building a business factors these in and approaches fund raising based on that knowledge. I don't even know the point of these articles any more.

[ChuckMcM]

Well as the saying goes, "It is always new to someone." :-) And that is largely true. Here in the second decade of the 21st century people are getting funded who were blissfully unaware children in the dot com crash, or the semi-conductor recession, or the great social is the new webvan pullback.

A publication can get a lot of clicks and buzz from folks for who it is new, and so they report it as new.

But the articles are all part of the system which trains and educates entrepreneurs. It provides examples and stories of people who bring to market real solutions, those who bring "fad" solutions, and those essentially bring "me too" type solutions. This system also trains investors, where each cycle has a few winners which spawns some additional limited partners (or general partners) in various VC firms who also look at how their money is spent and where its going.

As much as it would be great, there isn't really a course of study you can take that will teach you this stuff, you kind of have to live through a cycle or two, absorbing all the experience you can. If you want to be able to really internalize and understand the stuff that someone like Danielle Morrill is talking about you need context, and the context comes from experience both in the good times and the bad times.

So to answer your question about the point of these articles, it is the same reason they teach freshman Calculus or Composition. Everyone needs to know this stuff and every year there are new people trying to learn it. The message that value is always appreciated over hype is pretty timeless but sometimes it takes a couple of cycles to really understand and distinguish between the two.

[dwightgunning]

This is really a great explanation.

Earlier today I gave a friend a 5min primer on venture funding. After we'd parted ways and I walked back to my office I had that phrase "you can't teach some of this stuff" rolling around in my head for a while. You can't teach all of it but you have to get people started with something.

It's evolution.

[pritianka]

Also, I will look up Danielle Morrill's stuff more. I've definitely enjoyed following Mattermark in general.

[pritianka]

That's a really great explanation, thank you. You are right, everyone has to Calculus 101 :-)

[wpietri]

> I don't even know the point of these articles any more.

How else will the people who have been here less than 6 years get jaded?

More usefully, it may be obvious that these things go in cycles, but knowing exactly where we are in the cycle is very valuable to anybody who is thinking about raising money, or who is working at a company that isn't yet self-sufficient.

[ericd]

Yeah, the frequency of these things is a sort of useful barometer for those not in the thick of raising money.

[pritianka]

Haha, yes. One issue I do notice though is that the articles lag behind reality by some months at least. So by the time the news hits, it's already a much progressed state.

[ojbyrne]

I found it interesting that while VCs are peddling gloom right now, both Box and Square - 2 much criticized IPOs - both announced good results that beat expectations. Expect he herd mind to turn yet again.

[audleman]

This gave me a chuckle.