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Very interesting article today in the San Jose Mercury News (from the software section of their regular venture capital survey) on how the VC environment is changing in the Valley as entrepreneurs benefit from Web 2.0 technologies and open source software. Many startups these days are quite frugally run and don't need the big dosh that led to 'burn rate' being the key descriptive term in the late 90s (good lord, I'd totally forgotten that phrase till I read it in the article... and remembered I loaned my copy of the book of the same title -- on the rise and eventual diminution of Netscape -- to a friend years ago and never got it back!). Here's an interesting bit of the piece:

The landscape of the brave new Web has changed radically, with start-ups sprouting daily and clout shifting from VCs to entrepreneurs. The cost of launching a business has plummeted, driven down by the advances in the "open source" software movement, outsourcing and the potency of Web-based marketing. Further complicating life for VCs is the acquisitive appetite of deep-pocket firms like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and eBay, all shopping for companies. VCs have reacted by becoming more creative, often acting as seed investors in exchange for equity. "There's a lot of money chasing a lot of deals," said Venrock's David Siminoff.

Not as many programmers are needed now either -- one can do what took seven before, because there are more tools and a lot of them are free or very low cost, says the article. And:

"The concept now is that you build your company, hope it takes off," said Guy Kawasaki of the venture firm Garage Technology Partners. "If it does, then you go see the pain-in-the-ass VCs, but with more power on your side."

Interesting stuff. Just as a related addendum, when I was out in Korea for the Imagine Cup, I talked to a couple of money guys from BT (who had acted as judges in the earlier rounds) who expressed some disappointment that there was little evidence in the competition of Web.2.0, social networking technologies -- that's where their own interests lay. Hmmmm.