• Business 2.0 Magazine, Thursday, March 8, 2007 11:05 AM

The sell-off continues on Wall Street, but Silicon Valley is taking a collective yawn. Why the cool attitude? Seven years on, Silicon Valley is now a different place, in part because bright 20somethings see more opportunity these days in developing the next MySpace or YouTube than in betting heavily on rising tech stocks. Startups have also taken a different approach to investment, one that no longer requires Wall Street.

Google, Yahoo and Amazon are flush with cash, constantly looking to scoop up the next bight idea to stay ahead of their competitors. So startups raise capital in the hopes of one day being acquired by big companies or private-equity firms. Look at YouTube's Chad Hurley. Who wants to ride the NASDAQ roller coaster, anyway?

Even so, could this latest bubble be about to burst? Was YouTube, for example, really worth $1.65 billion? Certainly not yet. Web 1.0 companies that may have looked foolish in retrospect, now look like bright business ideas; by keeping their scope small, entrepreneurs retain the hope of a bigger buyout instead of relying on the fickle public.

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