… and I sure hope that it ends differently this time! What am I talking about? I am talking about the eerie parallels between 2000 and 2008. I remember attending some of the biggest startup / Internet conferences just at the time as the market started to implode. Now here I am at Web 2.0 Expo with thousands of people while Wall Street is melting down. Yesterday was a particularly weird reminder. First Fred played a clip in his keynote of Jason Calacanis exhorting B-school students to drop out and start a company at the height of the first bubble. Then just three keynotes later Gary Vaynerchuk was scolding folks to stop watching ‘Lost’ instead of starting a business. Clearly there are differences _ then it was a meltdown of the big names on the net, this time it is the financial sector. Jason’s argument was about following the money, Hart’s about following your passion. Still there is a scary sense of deja vu.

… and I sure hope that it ends differently this time! What am I talking about? I am talking about the eerie parallels between 2000 and 2008. I remember attending some of the biggest startup / Internet conferences just at the time as the market started to implode. Now here I am at Web 2.0 Expo with thousands of people while Wall Street is melting down. Yesterday was a particularly weird reminder. First Fred played a clip in his keynote of Jason Calacanis exhorting B-school students to drop out and start a company at the height of the first bubble. Then just three keynotes later Gary Vaynerchuk was scolding folks to stop watching ‘Lost’ instead of starting a business. Clearly there are differences _ then it was a meltdown of the big names on the net, this time it is the financial sector. Jason’s argument was about following the money, Hart’s about following your passion. Still there is a scary sense of deja vu.