I don’t usually use this blog as a soapbox or podium to voice my views and opinions, but the other day I happened to look at my tag line, “A Look At The Local DC Tech Scene and Other Technology and Social Media Musings” and it dawned on me that maybe I should 
In any case, I have been especially intrigued and excited about the dust-up today regarding the response to Thomas Friedman’s editorial in Sundays NY Times about how we may be better served by using some government’s bailout money on things other than bailing out the failing auto makers. At the time when I read the column I was impressed with his take and even took the time to twitter a few things about the article.
So I was a bit surprised when I came across a few posts today refuting Friedman’s conclusions, the first being a post on Techcrunch by Sarah Lacey titled “Friedman Misses the Point and Economic Reality of Silicon Valley“. While she agreed with his assessment that the auto makers should be allowed to fail depsite the hardships it would cause, she questioned his “knowledge” and understanding of the VC culture and Silicon Valley itself.
Thomas Friedman is a very smart man and a very good writer. He’s certainly sold more books than I ever will. But in reading his latest column
arguing $20 billion in bailout money should go to VCs not auto companies, one thing was crystal clear: This man doesn’t live in Silicon Valley. Has he even ever visited?
Apparently the crux of her argument revolves around one of Friedman’s points he makes in his column.
You want to spend $20 billion of taxpayer money creating jobs? Fine. Call up the top 20 venture capital firms in America, which are short of cash today because their partners — university endowments and pension funds — are tapped out, and make them this offer: The U.S. Treasury will give you each up to $1 billion to fund the best venture capital ideas that have come your way.
Sarah, and some others took issues with this and stated that VC’s don’t want nor need the money. In all of this I think much of Mr. Friedman’s point was missed. Sarah continued
Friedman further says in the column that “Bailing out the losers is not how we got rich as a country, and it is not how we’ll get out of this crisis.” Agreed. But what country got rich by bailing out winners? Is that even a concept that makes sense?
Well .. no. But what makes even less sense to me is how you make the leap that we are bailing out winners. I see it another way, we are investing in innovation hoping to build winners. And by creating these winners yes we will become rich. Maybe not rich monetarily, but rich in innovation which will lead to improvements in our infrastructure and possibly develop technologies that will allow us to ween ourselves off fossil fuels and become more self sufficient. The wealth hopefully will be in a strong foundation we can help rebuild ourselves upon. And this I feel was the point Friedman was attempting to make. Instead of reading the entire column and gaining an understanding of the big picture, people have chosen to focus on a couple of sentences used as an example. I am not sure if they all stopped reading at that point but just for reference there were 10 paragraphs after the one they are stuck on. Paragraphs talking about
Our country is still bursting with innovators looking for capital. So, let’s make sure all the losers clamoring for help don’t drown out the potential winners who could lift us out of this.
and how investing in these potential winners will kickstart the renewable energy industry helping to create work for thousands of people and possibly energizing a new generation to futher drive this innovation and help us to thrive far after our current crisis abates. I say bravo.
Sarah winds up her post by stating
Most shocking to me, Friedman invoked one of the most repeated Valley mantras to prove his point when he wrote, “Some of our best companies, such as Intel, were started in recessions, when necessity makes innovators even more inventive and risk-takers even more daring.” Mr. Friedman: Read the second half of your own sentence again. The reason recession-born companies are so inventive and daring is because founders are forced to work within constraints, precisely because it is harder to raise capital.
Instead of having Mr. Friedman read the second part of his sentence again, maybe she should read the rest of his column for the first time.
