NET RESULTS:ANY REMAINING doubts about Apple's iconic importance to teenagers will have been blown away by the results of a recent poll, in which Apple chief executive Steve Jobs came top as their leading entrepreneur, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON
The survey of 1,000 US teenagers is the seventh done annually by an organisation called Junior Achievement, which works to inspire teens to achieve in a global economy.
Teens placed Jobs, with 35 per cent of the vote, well ahead of Oprah, with 25 per cent, skater Tony Hawk at 16 per cent, and, interestingly, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at 10 per cent.
There would have been a time, say a decade ago, when Microsoft’s Bill Gates surely would have held the top spot. Even five years ago, I truly doubt Jobs would have figured. While teens followed Apple and its products, I don’t think Jobs himself formed a significant blip on their radar screen.
So what’s he doing there now? I’d guess the massive publicity around the iPhone launch, public focus on Jobs’s illness, and the hoopla around Jobs’s recent return to work have made the name behind Apple more obvious.
The reasons teens chose Jobs do, on the face of it, raise an eyebrow. Some 61 per cent said they chose him because they felt he “made a difference in/ improved people’s lives or made the world a better place”. Gee, kids, this isn’t Nelson Mandela.
On the other hand, within the terms of the survey (which is about successful businesspeople, not about most admired figures), that’s probably a decent-ish assessment in the world view of a teen, where iPods, portable music and videos, and an aspirational purchase like an iPhone would carry major weight.
Still, I’m a bit more comfortable with the reason cited by another 35 per cent: they placed Jobs first because of “success in multiple fields”, which at this point, include not just computers, iPods and iPhones but of course, box-office-topping animated films coming out of Jobs’s firm Pixar.
However, if Steve and Apple preoccupy the teen generation, it’s Larry and Oracle, and John and Cisco, who fill the thoughts of many of the entrepreneurs out here in Silicon Valley, where I’ve spent the past week.
According to some Valley insiders, only Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison and Cisco boss John Chambers, with their deep pockets and acquisitive appetites, offer much hope to many young companies for an exit in the current dire economy.
Again, this speaks volumes about the changing technology landscape. A decade ago, the exit of choice for many start-ups was to Microsoft. Which perhaps indicates that consumer- or PC-oriented products are not really where it’s at, at least for young companies aiming to roll themselves over. At the same time, networks, middleware, business productivity software suites . . . not quite the Next Big Thing the Valley likes to dream about.
The reason the two big Valley boys are prominent is that venture capital (VC) is scarce and many funds are drying up. Figures from a Thomson Reuters and National Venture Capital Association (NVCA)report, issued last Monday, show VC funding slumped a staggering 81 per cent in the third quarter, the lowest since 2003, the tail-end of poor sentiment after the dotcom crash.
Venture funds have shrivelled because there are no paybacks in sight for investors, who are normally a key part of the Valley investment cycle. Investors place cash in the funds to back tech start-ups, awaiting the point at which they go public (IPO) and – they hope – the cash rolls in.
Because there are no IPOs, there’s little chance of a payback. Because there’s no payback, there’s little appetite among investors to sink more money into funds with no near-term hope of going anywhere.
A few funds have bucked the trend. These include $58.5 million (€39.2 million) raised by Andreessen Horowtiz, set up by Valley luminary and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. Khosla Ventures was the bright star overall, raising the most cash, with $750 million going into a start-ups fund. But there’s a huge gap between that fund and the next largest for the quarter, $196 million raised by the Valley’s Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
In further bad news, the head of the NVCA is predicting funds generally aren’t likely to begin to recover until 2010, and even then only slowly. But the whispers for some time indicate this isn’t a recent development. An informed Valley figure told me a year ago that the VC world here is in turmoil, with some well-known VC companies barely hanging on.
Is it true? Looking through the shop window from the outside, who can tell? Neither pundits nor press here seem to be saying this. Yet there was little willingness to take the current recession seriously, either, until its full weight descended. I was out here a year ago and, back then, the received wisdom, if it can be called that, was that the Valley would barely be touched by any downturn.
The people expressing grave disquiet about the VC world are those who would know, people with interests in that sector. So we shall see.
klillington@irishtimes.com
Blog and podcasts: www.techno-culture.com
Twitter: Twitter.com/klillington
