
What US Software Companies Should Understand - max_
https://medium.com/@did_78238/what-us-software-companies-should-understand-about-the-rest-of-the-world-783e8dbca758#.fcmi8fdb1
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skewart
This blog post makes a number of good points, though it also kind of veers
into simplistic VC-bashing. It ends up sounding a little bitter and angry,
which undermines the smart insights elsewhere.

The US government is absolutely doing bad things with the NSA. And not wanting
to store data in the US is reasonable. But you'd be a fool to think that other
governments, especially Russia and China, weren't doing - or trying to do -
the exact same things the NSA does.

All the VC money sloshing around in SF these days may well distort valuations.
But it isn't 1999. The vast majority of companies that achieve huge valuations
do have significant revenues, or otherwise control valuable assets that can
easily be converted to cash (e.g. massive user engagement). So a three-year-
old startup with $300M in revenue is valued at 20x instead of 10x. So what?
It's still massive growth and a tremendous amount of money for a small team to
have captured in a short time.

I think a lot of the points about customer behavior and survivability are
great. And the point about scepticism towards the US gov is spot on. But then
it veers into a kind of cliched VC-bashibg that loses me.

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max_
[https://backchannel.com/why-silicon-valley-will-continue-
to-...](https://backchannel.com/why-silicon-valley-will-continue-to-
rule-c0cbb441e22f#.qtnyzge7t)

