Tech goes wild

Wall Street is governed by only two emotions: fear and greed. When greed goes bust, fear takes over. After being scared long enough, greed returns. This week saw a seven IPOs scheduled, the most in two years according to Reuters. A year ago fear was the new greed... I fear that greed is now the new fear.

Venture Capital and High Tech also only have fear and greed in our emotional palette, and guess which one is driving a $1 billion dollar valuation for Twitter ... the company with no revenue model.

So, thank goodness for some sanity: a clear-headed strategy by the folks at collaboration software company 37Signals has lead to a valuation of $100 billion because of a "group of investors who have agreed to purchase 0.000000001% of the company in exchange for $1." (Tip of the hat to Jared Rosoff for pointing me at this one.)

"And that's the way it is."

Happy New Year

This week sees the Jewish new year festival of Rosh Hashanah. We are offered four new years in the Jewish calendar (look 'em up) plus we get Jan 1 as well. This offers a plethora of opportunities for new starts, and so here I am, back on my blog.

Since last writing the summer has passed. It has been a full one, including nearly 1000 miles of cycling, mostly spread over weekly 40 mile rides with friends. I have also participated in my fourth Hazon NY Jewish Environmental Bike Ride. Hazon is the leading environmental group in the US Jewish community, working in areas of education, action and advocacy to make environmental concerns important in the community, and to make the Jewish voice important to the environmental movement. This year we are proud to be one of two key partners representing the Jewish community at a global conference of world religions, on the environment, organized by the Alliance of Religions and Conservation in the UK. In other examples of our work this year, Hazon’s CSA program at sites around the USA has put nearly $1m of purchasing power into local organic farms, and we have been participating in new programs supporting bike lane construction in New York City. Please consider supporting my fundraising for Hazon.

For those interested, we have an Israel Bike Ride coming up in November - places still available - and a new Bike Ride in the California Bay Area sometime in Spring 2010. Watch this space!

The traditional food for Rosh Hashanah is honey, the reason for which is the symbolism evoked with the traditional greeting with which I will close ... wishing you a Happy and Sweet New Year!