Still hurting from the dot-com bust, shellshocked venture capitalists in 2002 curtailed their fund raising for future investments to a 21-year low, according to a report.

No time to be an entrepreneur I guess.

VC Funding Slows to a Trickle

Are we so afraid of repeating the dot-com and telecom bubbles that we've written off entrepreneurs for a generation? That would be a tragedy. It's terribly tragic that the President's plan may institutionalize this bias.

A great nugget in the middle of this article talks presciently about Bush's suggestion that a tax cut on dividends will help America's economic woes.

Investors Want Growth

In every company, an insider set of managers influences decision making. In some cases, that’s healthy, in others (witness Enron), it’s a nightmare.

Core Group Therapy

check it!

eBid.Nashville Govt. Auction Site

Elaine,

I thought this was particularly relevant given our conversation today.

"I screened job applicants over the phone for a company I didn't work for. My favorite part: Arrogant middle managers who suddenly began to grovel when they realized I wasn't the receptionist."

Outsourcing rejection

This article is chock full of interesting information, most of which I don't know if I agree with or not. One thing is for sure, I stand corrected on metered services. The industry is moving away from metered and towards flat pricing, and the reason is that they need stable revenue streams and there's no cap ex to build metered accounting for digital services.

Here Comes the Real Fun for Telecom

From the Captain Obvious Department:

In light of this, it would seem to make sense for managers to keep track of their workers' Web habits. Shouldn't employees conduct personal business on their own time? Think of all the lost productivity!

Not so fast.

Why you shouldn't act like Big Brother

BellSouth will stop offering residential customers its DSL Talking service next week, ending one of the first attempts in the United States to sell phone service over digital subscriber lines.

Sure we're deploying advanced data services in exchange for access to the LD market

From the no shit department:

With DirecTV Broadband poised to dismantle its high-speed Internet service, consumers are losing one of the last alternatives to the increasingly dominant telephone and cable giants.

Wired News: DirecTV DSL's Exit Limits Choices

Remember the CLECs? They were the fancy new phone companies that were going to take on the Bell incumbents. New technology, lower prices, better service, and local, long distance and data all on one bill--the Bells didn't stand a chance. The future of telecommunications services for businesses belonged to Allegiance, Time Warner Telecom, WinStar, XO and their CLEC brethren.

This is perhaps the most clued and accurate representation of what happened and what is happening. However, they miss the salient point that telecom services are a rapidly falling commodity still, and it will be difficult to find high margin customers as we move forward.

The changing tide of CLECs