Tim Oren on VCs and MSFT
There’s been a bit of traffic on whether VCs are “loyal” to Microsoft .NET, and more broadly on Longhorn et al. Tim Oren’s response is right on:
Rich rightly observes the lack of VC loyalty to any particular technology. You all know what we are loyal to, right? That’s right, long term capital gains.
Longhorn is tactically and strategically compromised. Tactically because it is grossly late, and keeps shedding features. Any venture that relied on it has already died on the road somewhere. Any business or product plan based on it has serious cred problems. Longhorn is strategically compromised because it is still fundamentally a play on the desktop.
Strategic leverage as negative indicator. …. Do you think the average VC would be happier today if they had made a bet five years ago on Longhorn dependent applications, .NET dependent web services, or a few XBOX titles? It’s the market where MSFT was unable to use its strategic leverage where it’s the most competitive. That ought to scare you.
The storage learning curve beat out even Moore’s Law, so we just keep everything now.
What have you done to help us as users? Staying too close to the desktop has let entrants like Google move right onto the pain point of the market without opposition.
Go read Tim’s post. Also, go check out his post on The Art of the Fast Take.
Tags: business, vc, microsoft, google
