I have written a few posts in which I stated that a lot of what is going on in technology today is useless because instead of looking at peak oil and climate change people are working on ridiculous, me-too start-ups. (Nobody will care about your iPad app if we cannot keep the lights on.)
I saw a couple of articles that are somewhat related to this idea. One is there are startups using “crowdfunding” for start-ups revolved around hardware that the supposedly smart VCs would not fund. Granted, the gadgets are small. I doubt anyone will ever fund a thorium reactor via Kickstart. The article does not mention energy but I did like it. I still say the VCs are not as smart as they think they are.
Another article dealt with the Facebook fallout. Paul Graham of YCombinator wrote a letter to his portfolio companies telling them that funding will dry up since Facebook’s falling price is putting a chill on the markets, so the companies need to hunker down. And it looks like Facebook’s revenue is not looking too good these days (see articles here, here and here). I cannot claim that I predicted these events, but I think it’s funny that our supposed betters in California and Wall Street all seem surprised by this. I have a hard time taking them seriously.
Image from Wikipedia