[ Thanks to Andy Updegrove for this
link. ]
“I remember one 20-year-old Harvard student who graced me with a
half hour of his time in 2000. He was making the rounds of all of
the top law, accounting and venture capital firms in Boston to
decide which ones he would permit to work with his new still-to-be
incorporated company. Suddenly, he looked at his watch, and stood
up. It turned out he needed to jump on his bike and beat it back to
Cambridge or he’d be late for his job in the student center
mailroom.“True story.
“And yet, until last Thursday, there was still one major piece
missing, and its absence was keeping things semi-rational, at least
back here in the stolid Northeast. That piece was the lack of a
clear path to liquidity, because the window of the initial public
offering (IPO) market for emerging companies has been closed, or
barely ajar, since the Great Big Internet Bubble burst in 2000.“And then, on Thursday, it happened. LinkedIn went public.”