As I May Think...

Of Liquidity, Competition and Platforms

Fred Wilson, of "A VC" recently sparked a great deal of controversy with his post: "We Need A New Path To Liquidity".  Fred suggests that with the IPO market "closed," we now need new thinking about how to reward innovators for their work. Today, getting bought out seems to be the exit strategy that innovators build for, but buy-outs, while enriching those who sell, have tended to result in many innovative solutions languishing or being diluted in the process of assimilation into the purchasing organization.  Luminaries such as Jeff Jarvis and Umair Haque have already commented on the main body of Fred's piece, so I'll limit my self to something he writes in response to comments:

Fred Wilson wrote:

The web is decomposing into smaller and smaller pieces And those pieces are sustainable as standalone opportunities

I think we'll find that these pieces aren't quite as sustainable as Fred would like them to be... Its a simple matter of economics.

As the pieces become "smaller and smaller," the barriers to entry are lowered and thus there are more opportunities to enter the market. Lower barriers lead to intensified competition, reduced differentiation and lowered returns for individual developers even as the overall market grows. In such a market, the qualities of your implementation eventually become irrelevant. Sustainability in such an environment comes from one of: lowered expectations, integration with a larger platform or branding. Getting bought out early is the best thing you can hope for...

3:00am Phone Calls: Genetic Testing for Presidential Candidates?

In the recent debate over who would be best to answer 3:00am phone calls at the While House, most commentators have focused on the relative "experience" of Hilary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John MacCain. However, experience alone is the not the only measure of who is best to be hauled out of bed and faced with a crisis call. We should also consider basic elements of personality such as the degree of emotional response to stressful situations... Which candidate is most likely to answer the call with a level head and respond rationally, not emotionally?

Today, the NIH described research that finds a genetic factor in stress response variability. According to the press release:

Inherited variations in the amount of an innate anxiety-reducing molecule help explain why some people can withstand stress better than others...
Scientists led by David Goldman, M. D., chief of the NIAAA Laboratory of Neurogenetics, identified gene variants that affect the expression of a signaling molecule called neuropeptide Y (NPY)...
"NPY is induced by stress and its release reduces anxiety," said Dr. Goldman. ...
The researchers evaluated the NPY gene variants' effects on brain responses to stress and emotion. Using functional brain imaging, they found that individuals with the variant that yielded the lowest level of NPY reacted with heightened emotionality to images of threatening facial expressions. ...
In a preliminary finding, the low level NPY gene variant was found to be more common than other variants among a small sample of individuals with anxiety disorders. The researchers also found that low level NPY expression was linked to high levels of trait anxiety. "Trait anxiety is an indication of an individual's level of emotionality or worry under ordinary circumstances," explained Dr. Goldman.

So, will we one day be asking presidential candidates to submit genetic profiles so that we can objectively determine which is most likely to respond rationally and unemotionally to these 3:00am phone calls?
What sort of a world will we have once scientists are successful in working out the genetic code? Will genetic testing become a common criteria for a wide variety of jobs?

bob wyman