• by Joe Mandese , March 23, 2009

Richard de Silva, General Partner, Highland Capital Partners, started the start-up panel on a decidedly wishy-washing note, acknowledging, “I wish I knew where we were in the market cycle.”

That said, he claimed to be optimistic that the online start-up business market would once again “look a lot like 2003,” but he couldn’t say if that would be “six months from now,” or a year from now.

James Slavet of Greylock Partners was even more of a downer, call it a “very, very, very funky and unusual time,” and summing up the current venture capital mindset as, “Nobody around here is trying to be a hero.”