I rode the SillyCon Valley electric bull... and didn't fall off

Unless you were hiding under a rock in the late 90's, you're probably familiar with the so-called "internet boom". Both Bruce and I were involved, he much more so than I was. (He was smart and got merely a CS bachelor's degree. I was not quite so smart and spent several years in graduate school before deciding the real world would be better.)

It was a time of niche,serendipitous ideas. It was amazing. Someone could come up with the most obscure idea in the world for a company, and rather than laughing it off wistfully, you could make it happen, because the money was there. You want an online dog-washing service, small breeds only? You got it. You want an online review service for cell biology but not protein biochemistry research products (yes, I worked there)? Here's your money. The ideas flowed, they were many, and it was a renaissance of sorts.

And most techie towns, you couldn't walk into a cafe or coffee shop without hearing of talk about programming, business strategy, "page views", p/e ratios... As someone who tries to find more to life than work, it was a bit stifling.

Of course, students who graduated from college during this time ended up spoiled, for the most part. Since jobs were plentiful, it was easy to find an entry-level position doing grunt work for Company X... and it unfortunately created a bit of a sense of entitlement. People expected to have a job once they graduated. And of course, those days are gone.

Both Bruce and I have fabulous memories... and not so fabulous. Shortly after Bruce became employee 9 at a small company and loved it, I became employee 10 at another company. They were run like night and day. My company was stratified such that I was 4 levels below the president -- in a 10 person company! I didn't last there long; they were so disorganized that I'd often come in with one hour of work to do a day. Had I been wiser then, I would've spent much less time on site. Maybe that would've sent a message. So it wasn't all fun and games, all the time. It's good to be good, but it's better to be lucky.

Many of our friends got carried away. They invested, they day-traded, and they did it in a big way. We often conservatively kept 1/3. Compared to others in our age category, we're financially quite well-off. We didn't let the notion of wealth get to our heads. Too badly. ;)

And this is why I say... that we rode the SillyCon Valley electric bull... and didn't fall off.