Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Riches beyond compare

Here is a link to all the Forbes coverage of their 400 richest people in America, complete with some video an profiles on list newbies. Enjoy, if that's the right word. More interesting and providing a certain sense of schadenfreude is the roll call of drop-offs including Michael Eisner, whose fall matches his relentless decline as a self-styled media mogul. More interesting and telling is the fate of Jim Clark and Vinod Khosla. Jim changed the way businesses were financed and momentarily tipped the table in favour of the founders, Vinod is one of Silicon Valley's most respected VCs and a bit of a statemen since he has been both a founder and a financier. Their relative decline has occured as people have woken up to the fact that the technology sector has become a mature market with relatively little opportunity for growth.

New start-ups live in constant fear of having their business crushed my monopoly software player Microsoft, even large firms like Google, Yahoo or Apple are not immune.