I needed to laugh a bit today after reading more of the seemingly endless VC debate about what is Free (Freemium, Not Free, Partially Free, Free with benefits) when we have so much of it around us. Of course, when something bothers me, I try to joke about it.
Thank goodness, almost every day a friend in Facebook posts a Word of the Day and I try to post a humorous usage of the word. Here was today’s:
verdant \VUR-dnt, adjective: 1. Green. 3. Lacking experience; naive. (His usage: My lawn, due to the rain, or airport travelers this weekend.)
My suggested usage: Given that only recently VCs have considered eco-friendly opportunities verdant, it appears as though they were just verdant before.
VCs focus on specific areas of opportunity and rightly so. Domain experience in a given industry is critical to their investors. How else would they they pick winners? But what if someone came into your office twenty years ago and talked about nanotubes? Would you have listened?
At times, I’m surprised by the herd mentality VCs exhibit. At times, I think they tend to exhibit the same adoption lifecycles of anything else – technology or otherwise.
What about this: 30+ years of awareness of ecological problems associated with consumption. Was the notion blunted by 30+ years of bad ideas? Was the problem domain experience? A lack of investors? At any rate, I’m really happy that green investment has caught everyone’s attention. What’s next?
