I’ve got the fever and it’s worse than before.  And I’m not just channeling Peggy Lee.  Turn me loose — preferably in the digital media/network/advertising space.

I just wrapped up a promising gig:  helping
a great CEO articulate a brilliant business
model and present the pitch.  We were getting ready to knock the socks off the venture capitalists who
had requested meetings when — cue the music, possibly the Law & Order sound — things got woolly in the infrastructure and the whole thing disintegrated.  Lessons learned forthcoming — here’s the first.

Steam is building in this neck of the woods again.  Vapor, duplicity and exaggeration are back as well, but not in the quantity of the late 1990s.  This version of Valley Voodoo is a different kind of magic.  Tools and toys that people want, moving along a the better-understood information highway.

VCs are backing sensible platforms and ideas that are
exciting not just because they could be lucrative but because of how they open up communication and connect people —
socially and commercially.  Entrepreneurs who grew up soaked in
Internet functionality, because they use it for everything, may stand on the
verge of maturity, but they’re teaching other generations what can be done with an equally-maturing Internet. 

All they need, besides
a personal shopper from Bloomingdale’s instead of Abercrombie &
Fitch, are a few with-it veterans that get them, their dreams and what it takes to fund and run a company.