Fred Destin

The VC industry is determined to avoid the mistakes of the past downturn and citing “ad nauseam” from the Sequoia CEO meeting slides.  I guess most of us have been telling CEOs to prepare for bad times for a while, maybe citing Calacanis or Wilson.  But give it to Sequoia for capturing the mood and putting all the data together it this soon-to-be legendary set of slides that I embedded below.  After all the highly succesful firm was founded the year I was born and has been making money ever since; no wonder people are paying attention.

Having said that if I hear one more guy at a board tell me “it’s not going to be a V-shaped recovery, you know” (slide 42),  I will slap him.  I will.  So it was a relief to see that another prominent venture capital firm, Whiner Jerkins, had put up a more grounded view of the downturn and its effect on “innovation street”.  Oh, and i found it through the Bret Easton Ellis of tech blogging, Henry Blodget’s Alley Insider.  The irony of it all !

Whiner Jerkins All Hands 10/13/08 – Get more Business Plans