• Los Angeles Times, Friday, October 10, 2008 12:01 PM

In better times, venture capital firm Sequoia Capital has funded everything from Apple to Cisco to YouTube. But these are not better times, and this week the firm invited about 100 executives from some companies it has already backed to what was essentially a funeral for the second Web boom, complete with a tombstone that read: "R.I.P.: Good Times."

"They basically said: 'This is a business. This is not an excuse for you and a bunch of your friends to have a pool table and goof around with something you think is neat.' I didn't come away thinking that the sky is falling or that I have to move to Canada, just that these guys are taking this seriously.", said one unidentified executive who attended the private meeting.

This is not the first time Sequoia has held such a meeting. The last one, not surprisingly, was after the original dot-com bust in 2001. That can be considered good news and bad news: History is repeating itself, but this time Silicon Valley knows the routine.

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