Over-compensation

The one thing I have noticed about myself is that, in a strange situation, I go back to what works. For instance, I practice Karate, and for fun, I attend a Judo class. If I'm in a Judo class, and I just can't seem to find a good way to throw my opponent, I just might punch him. Karate is good at that.

I'm here in San Jose (loving it, not loving the distance from family), and I think I'm going back to what works. Or should I say, I am continually amazed at the extremely high level of technical savvy out here, and I think I overcompensate by going back to my East coast roots - back to the money.

If I hear about another Web 2.0 company that's going to create some sort of social network virally, and then see someone wave their hands about monetizing through advertisements... I'm going to barf. Not that I don't like the services I'm hearing about, because I do. Not that I don't think these guys are wicked (like that Boston word?) smart, because they are. I'm going to barf because to the man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. To the valley entrepreneur, every company looks like MySpace. I just want to hear somebody out here say "I'm going to have this new website that's so valuable that I'm going to charge the mother f*ckers for using it." Just once. Humor me. There's somebody out there in downtown San Jose with the cajones to suggest that somebody other than Google AdSense pay for a service. It's almost this sort of pathological self-esteem issue, where they value the service less than the subscriber. No - sorry - it's probably more accurate to say that the service exists only to attract the subscribers, so I can do stuff to them later on, but don't really ask what that might be.

Sort of funny for a VoIP guy to say, huh? Free calling? VoIP? Hello? Internally, I'm quite clear about the dismal failure telecom companies are in technology, especially web technologies. But, declining ARPUs or not, I gotta love their business. People make a call, and they bill them. So, sweet. Lovey, let's open a bottle of bubbly and toast to our West coast brothers.