Fred, I think the decreased cost of starting a web business is what's causing both the calls for the death of venture capital and the experience you're having o

Fred, I think the decreased cost of starting a web business is what's causing both the calls for the death of venture capital and the experience you're having of increased deal flow. There's just a lot more of us founders so it's natural that you'd see more deals even if you weren't also doing an excellent job of making a name for yourself through blogging and smart investments. On the other hand, the costs dropped so low that I think you're finding a lot more people jumping in who are driven more by the romantic ideal of building a company rather than just to prove one idea before moving on to the next. I say it's a romantic notion because of a recent thread that PG kicked off where he said that he couldn't imagine working on the same company forever because there were so many other interesting things to do. I think the romantics develop such an attachment to the company they're building that they couldn't imagine ever leaving it. I'm a romantic. For a number of overblown reasons, VC feels antithetical to building a company you want to stay at. There's the pejoratives (lifestyle business, would you rather be rich or a king?) that come from the VC backed startup culture. There's the need for an exit. And more importantly, I think people who think this way would much rather ask customers for money than investors. I think that comes down to preferring to focus on value rather than hype.