Funny FilmLoop Coincidence...

Trying to catch up on my business reading, and Business 2.0 is one of my favorite magazines that’s been languishing in a stack.  Got about half way through tonight when, in an article entitled “Tech’s Big Comeback”, I tripped over a comment about Prescott Lee, co-founder of FilmLoop, and how the company had moved into 285 Hamilton, the famous office building in Palo Alto and whose occupancy, according to authors Michael Copeland and Om Malik, has served as a kind of tech-health barometer, indicating the state of affairs in Silicon Valley. 

Believe me, FilmLoop quartering up in 285 could neither be an accident, nor insignificant.  It not only makes a statement, but might provide a little insight into what I expect the company’s mindset might be – something like “we’re big on the inside today, tomorrow we’re going to be very big on the outside”.

(In researching Lee a bit, I also found an interesting Podcast on ZDNet entitled “Building a Successful Startup” that he and Guy Kawasaki participated in.  What better way to understand a principal’s views on building a business than to listen to the advice s/he’s giving others on, well, building a business.  Can’t wait to listen…)

I have to say the article greatly encouraged me not only about the comeback of Tech, as the article is titled, but also about the tech industry’s amazing resilience and enormous elasticity.  Certainly this is not an American phenomenon, but as juxtaposed against post-Apocalyptic reports of death and dying in the Valley, it was a refreshing read.

As “The Web”, whatever we consider that to be these days, marches on, it will be very interesting to watch the new dynamics and trends in Tech businesses.  Today, smaller is better, IPOs are not only not a given but will be shunned by many, component and “part of the game/solution” as opposed to “lets build/own/deliver the whole enchilada” and having the public prototype and iterate your product/software/solution for you will all be parts of a Silicon Valley rebirth.  Or, I should say, they already are.