Dave Winer, after reading this comment on John Doerr’s statement of regret for an ill-advised comment during the inflation of the Internet bubble, says I should let Doerr off the hook. Sorry, I can’t do that.
I think highly of Doerr in many ways. His record is certainly more positive than negative in the tech industry, and his support, through TechNet, of better education is valuable.
But he is one of the people who fueled the Internet mania, and he is most definitely one of the people who profited the most from the bubble.
Bill Seitz has it right, I think, when he says Doerr and company (including the investment banks and “analysts”) realized they could make billions on small investors who were greedy and didn’t know any better. It was legal. It wasn’t right.
Seitz says, “I also think that instead of relabelling the net as the greatest creation and evaporation of wealth, he should have honestly called it the greatest transfer of wealth (to him, his investors, the IBs, ad agencies, the founders of lame Silicon Alley consultancies, etc.).”
This hits closer to home. I, too, profited from the bubble when technology journalism became so much more in demand. So did my company. (The company is currently taking quite a hit as a result of the plummeting advertising market in the wake of the bubble’s bursting.)
John Doerr has done far more good than harm to the industry, and for society. The technology Kleiner Perkins helped nurture will be working to our mutual benefit for ages to come.
But he and his cronies injected something dangerous into the mix during the height of the Internet hubris. They injected cynicism far greater than anything we’d seen prior to that time.
John and others here in the valley were correctly appalled at the market distortions caused by the Microsoft monopoly. I don’t think they’re sufficiently bothered by the market distortions — and the corrosion of public trust in markets that resulted — they helped engineer.