This article is all based on an off the cuff remark by a single (often deliberately controversial) partner at Kleiner. And it's nothing new that people in SV despise the term "Web 2.0."
If Sequoia or Benchmark announced, as firms, that they were no longer investing in web startups, that would be meaningful.
Randy Komisar saying that "Web 2.0" companies are a lose is different thing.
It may not be significant what this particular VC says, probably without giving it much thought. But there is a justified disappointment with many things that go by the Web 2.0 token. I found it very convincing when you wrote this:
"One of the most valuable things my father taught me is an old Yorkshire saying: where there's muck, there's brass. Meaning that unpleasant work pays. And more to the point here, vice versa. Work people like doesn't pay well, for reasons of supply and demand."
How many of those Web 2.0 startups are actually tackling unpleasant, hard, messy problems in your view?
I don't think there's any correlation at all between whether a startup gets called a "web 2.0" startup and how hard the problems are that they have to work on.
Look at Loopt. Seems like a classic, frothy social app. And yet beneath it are very difficult technical problems and horribly tedious negotiations with carriers. Or Justin.TV. What could me more frivolous, right? And yet to get it to work they had to build their own CDN for live streaming. They spent 6 months working round the clock building infrastructure (including custom hardware) before they could even launch.
I agree that there are several web applications that require solving hard messy problems. I'm not sure if I would call Loopt a Web2.0 startup, but I agree with the point about Justin.tv
The problem however is that a good number of startups that call themselves web2.0 companies are building facebooks apps, Yet Another Social Network, or roll your own web app with Ruby on Rails in 15 minutes.
a good number of startups that call themselves web2.0 companies are building [things with no substance]
That's no different from Web 1.0. In 1998, people thought all they had to do was create a "portal" for some special interest, and it would be a company. Replace "portal" with "social network" and it's 2008.
If Sequoia or Benchmark announced, as firms, that they were no longer investing in web startups, that would be meaningful.
Randy Komisar saying that "Web 2.0" companies are a lose is different thing.