Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are trading in their PowerPoint decks for picket signs after negotiations broke down between the Entrepreneurs Guild of America West and the National Venture Capital Association.
Venture capitalists acknowledge that the Internet’s growing quickly and is going to be big, but argue it’s too early to tell just how profitable it will be. “We don’t know yet if there’s real money to be made on the Internet.” said NVCA President Mark G. Heesen. “Venture capitalists need to get a least a 2x participating preferred liquidity preference and no income tax on carried interest to prevent innovation from being stifled.”
Entrepreneurs Guild President Marc Andreessen has announced that entrepreneurs may not write any more business plans or wear sandals with Velcro straps until the strike is over.
“While the Writer’s Strike was clearly ill-advised, this boycott was simply unavoidable.” Andreessen explained on his popular blog. “My social networking platform Ning had to settle for a measly $170 million pre-money valuation when it was clearly worth at least $300 million.”
There have been reports that some entrepreneurs are crossing picket lines and going back to work after it became clear there would be no resolution before Christmas. After two hours of striking, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced, “I’m CEO, bitches” and returned to work. Soon after, he apologized using his Facebook status message and a blushing emoticon.
Taking a cue from writers, some entrepreneurs have tried using the Internet to disintermediate venture capitalists by e-mailing pension funds and university endowment managers. CalPERS’s e-mail servers crashed after they were overwhelmed by pitch e-mails.
The strikes have virtually shut down San Hill Road, downtown Palo Alto and the SoMa district in San Francisco. Three entrepreneurs were also spotted striking on New York’s west side. Sequoia’s Michael Moritz complained, “I had to run over three entrepreneurs to get to my office today, but I’m sure they’ll just get back up and pitch me again tomorrow.”
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