theatre’s 500 year bubble?
New York mag’s article about the (so-called) Web 2.0 bubble quotes Netscape founder Marc Andreesen: "The technology industry gets funded – by venture capitalists, angel investors and Wall St – on the baseball model. Out of ten swings at the bat, get maybe seven strikeouts, two base hits, and, if you are lucky, one home run. The base hits and home runs pay for all the strike outs. If you’re going to call it a bubble, you have to conclude that the industry is in a perpetual bubble, and has been for 40 years."
The implication that the technology industry invented this strategy cracks me up — it’s funded the entertainment business since at least Shakespeare, and as technology morphed entertainment into cinemas and television. (And suggests that entertainment is in a centuries-long bubble…)
Peter Guber, when I saw him talk at the Aspen Comedy Festival, reminisced about running Sony Studios. After using the same analogy to describe a slate of movies, his bosses in Tokyo said "but Guber-san, just don’t produce the flops".