Silicon Valley Speaker Series event
Tonight I went to one of the Silicon Valley Speaker Series held by the University of Edinburgh. The speaker was Randy Haykin, a venture capitalist and founding VP of marketing at Yahoo! Having been invited to these events for over a year this was my first time and I didn’t really know what to expect but Randy’s talk was really relevant to the current economic climate and how is effects he acquiring of funding. Whilst it wasn’t good news, it wasn’t all bad either. a recession is a big change to an economy that has trickle down effects on peoples day to day lives and its effects are felt in the various investment types in different ways. It was interesting to hear from someone with 12 years of experience in the industry. I have to admit to finding the whole thing fascinating. The economy is the foundation of our society and it’s interesting to see how things that seem unconnected but actually aren’t. That’s even without taking the influence of what happens in other countries into account.
Even though I’m down the equivalent of a small car on the stock market I guess I’m still largely unaffected and safe in the knowledge that that in 18 months we’ll be back to normal. At least that’s what they say, but then again Alistair Darling isn’t Mystic Meg and might just be trying to put a brave face on it. Like they say, there’s nothing to fear except fear itself.
One other thing about the change induced by a recession is the potential new opportunities. Don’t get me worng, I’m not talking about benefitting from someones missfortune, but the things that were until now more difficult. Unlike the Zimbabwaens we met at the border between their country and Zambia who said to “give it a few years”, Randy never said to shelve any plans to start a business until the recession was over. He had a few ideas about how to make the most of the economic uncertainty. For one, it’s not a recruiters market in many industries and as I discovered with with my lunchtime meeting even people in computing are willing to work only for equity in a company that doesn’t exist yet. The IT recruitment market as a whole is relativly untouched by the redundacies seen elsewhere. It seems to be an ideal time to acquire talent at a good price, especially when I’m on the market!