- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- May 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- October 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
Blog archive
Tag cloud
1st 37signals Aaltoes aaltovg acquisition advertising advice agile analysis Angry Birds article Asmo Halinen attitude aula awards bad stuff Balancion bankruptcy beginning being in touch blog blogs bluesky positioning blyk board membership bobba bolder book bootstrapping Brain Alliance brainhack braking news brian alliance briefs cases cc communication communications community behavior competition conference conferences cool new stuff creativity critique crowdsourcing data day of failure dayforfailure.com dd deal making Deasign deeplead design dopplr ecommerce economy ecosystem elections elinvoima email emba enca.fi entrepreneurs entrepreneurship epaonnistumisenpaiva ethics event events evetns examples exit facebook fail day failing failure fame features financing Finland Finland Young Professionals finnish first freerider Fruugo fun fwd FYP games good morning finland good stuff google gossip government gps grandone helene auramo human interaction humans huomenta suomi ideas innovation interview investment invitation iphone IPR IRC-Galleria iron sky jobs jussi laakkonen key note launch law leadership learning magenta management marketing Mårten Mickos Martin Varsavsky material microblogs mikko tikka monday morning Morten Lund motivators MTV3 Muxlim MySQL Netcycler networking new Nokia nominations nordic business forum nordic scene Obama online communities online games open Open Source openess openness opportunity outside story panel people personal personal opinion pictures pinball dreams podcast polictics policy politics PR presentation pricing problem Project WORM proposals public beta random stuff recognition recruiting red herring richard branson RunToShop school Scrooge McDuck shameless self-promotion showcases SIME sitra slush social media social networks society soprano sources of information sources of informations speaking gig speculation speech Startup Sauna startups starwreck statistics stockmarket strateginen kilpailukyky strategy success story Sulake tabu tane.li Tapio Hedman taxes teams techcrunch Tekes The Bachelor the economy TheNextWeb Tiburon-TV tips tradesale transaction transformational leadership travel tsunami TV tv-kaista tvinno vakuutuskone.com valuation vc vertical communities video videos voting vs war story wealth welcome welcome to finland work World of Warcraft wreck a movie Wunderkraut xiha life
Newsletter
Martin Varsavsky: "time of scared bankers"
Sat 2008-10-11 14:47
Martin Varsavsky is a famous serial entrepreneur who's founded 7 companies and is currently founder/CEO of FON the largest wifi network in the world. (Google + Skype are behind FON as its investors, btw).
Martin is also an investor in Dopplr where I have had the privilege to work with him a bit. He is known from his contrarian opinions and quick wits. For example in a recent article to the Huffington Post Martin is writing that "I believe that over the next 20 years, many of these "worthless" mortgages will turn out to be very valuable and partly or fully repaid.", which goes pretty much against what everybody else thinks on the issue.
He just sent an very interesting video to Seesmic 45 minutes ago:
Martin is telling us that bankers have never been this scared, and is throwing the big scary word "depression" around a few times, quoting that for example Nokia's stock is down for almost 70% already.
Interesting times indeed, and its great to hear the latest directly from Martin here.
Curiously enough Seesmic is one of the web 2.0 startups who is hitting the brakes full time with fresh layoffs. Do you think that this severe "doom and gloom" will hit Finland, or can we somehow weather the storm and just see it pass by?
Trackback URL for this post:
http://tane.li/trackback/42
Hi. My name is Taneli Tikka. This is where I preach what I practice. I'm a
serial entrepreneur and a startup activist of sorts. People usually know me
from my past and present consumer Internet service projects: Wunderkraut, TLD Registry, IRC-Galleria,
Dopplr, Muxlim, StarDoll, RunToShop, Vakuutuskone.com, and a bunch of other stuff. My
"proper" bio is behind this link. Glad to see you here, thanks for browsing
around.
Latest entries
Recent comments
Comments
Let the air out
Sat, 2008-10-11 13:42 — Lasse Enersen (not verified)I think it's great to see companies tightening their belts. It is good environment for startups. I mean real startups, not the "to the moon with no plan"-startups.
I've always hated to see tech companies spending money like crazy. Never seen the point in it. I have a theory that In times of financial distress, the clever companies big and small with wise spending and good work ethics will bloom, and the ones that have to rely on borrowing lots of money all the time... well they shouldn't exist in the first place. That is what the mother nature of global economic system is trying to tell us right now. Borrowing and wasting money isn't good for private people, companies or nations. Saving money, being cash positive and investing in producing rather than in services is good. And this is why I can't see the reason why we should try to save the whole economic system, which is the reason in itself for the destruction. System that relies on creating excess debt. Let the asset values go down, where they should be, and not intervene by artificial measures that only create more problems, like huge inflation on top of this.
Ok, got a bit carried away here :) Any way, I look forward to times where companies and countries have to make money in order to stay alive. That is the sort of capitalism I like.
Post new comment