Just a feeling, but I see a lot of weak companies being over-funded. The more often this happens, and the less often that VC's get their 4x return, the harder

Just a feeling, but I see a lot of weak companies being over-funded. The more often this happens, and the less often that VC's get their 4x return, the harder it will be to get funding. I remember a chart from a recent VC internal presentation showing the net return on industry investment from the last year going in the red. Detroit was king, but in their success was greedy and stopped caring about the quality of the product. Other cultures sprang up that cared about the product, and the tides turned. People asked why their neighbors didn't "buy American" (instead of asking why Detroit didn't make good cars), but even grassroots protectionism won't save a rotten company. Those who think the Valley is following detroit see that personal computing is tired and products are in a race to the bottom. I remember when a PC cost as much as a car, and people bought them as business capital. Now we complain if a laptop costs more than a car payment, and expect web content and software to be "ad based" (aka free to those of us who ignore ads). There are still opportunities here, but not at the VC magnitude (unless you believe Facebook's valuation). The Valley needs to learn something new, maybe "green tech", pharmaceuticals, or robotics, if is going to continue its reign. It isn't guaranteed, and there are other cities that are familiar with these industries. The Internet currently has an English bias to give us a competitive advantage, but if Japan engineers better solar panels and makes them in China, it will be hard competition.