Excerpts:
“Jobs — good, six-figure jobs, with perks like free haircuts and lessons on how to create the next start-up company — are here for the taking, at least for software engineers. And for anyone with a decent idea and the drive to start a company, $100,000 to get it off the ground is easy to come by.”
“Backing another start-up is a status symbol, the No. 1 splurge, and it captures both the tech industry’s belief in the future and its fear of missing the next big thing.”
“by 2010, start-up investing was booming again with money from angel investors playing with their own cash, and this year the I.P.O. markets opened wide to tech companies for the first time since 2007.”
“Twenty-two tech companies went public in the second quarter alone this year worth $5.5 billion, the highest dollar amount since 2000, according to the National Venture Capital Association. Only six went public in all of 2008.
The valuations of young start-ups, meanwhile, have been defying gravity. Almost 1,000 raised $7.5 billion from venture capitalists in the second quarter, up 19 percent from the first quarter and 61 percent from the same period in 2009.”
“You never change the way you dress,†says an executive at one hot start-up who made a small fortune at a previous one. He wore an orange T-shirt. “You don’t want to flaunt it,†he adds, “especially in front of your employees. So you might buy a car that’s nice but not too fancy — maybe a Prius or a BMW, but definitely not a Bentley — and take up a hobby like kite surfing. You occasionally charter a plane to fly privately, especially if it gives you more time to work on your start-up. Efficiency makes sense to engineers; splurging for splurging’s sake does not.”
“Instead, the biggest splurge for the valley’s nouveau riche is angel investing, putting $25,000 or $100,000 into a friend’s start-up to keep the cycle going.”
“That’s where all the money goes,†says Alex Rampell, a co-founder of TrialPay, an online advertising start-up in Mountain View. “It’s not about making it back. It’s about feeling good — and doing what’s accepted.â€
“The scene was an office-warming party for Airbnb, a service for people who want to rent rooms in their homes. It had just joined the club of start-ups, including Spotify, Square and Gilt, that were valued at $1 billion or more by their investors; its new office was befitting of a company with $112 million in fresh capital.”
