Prescription for success for CA and U.S.

Here are five things the state needs to do in coordination with the Federal Gov't in order to "save our state" and as we all know, where CA goes, so does the country...

1. Comprehensive tax reform--reduce the burden on production supply and output, for starters.

2. The federal and state budget deficits: a comprehensive, long term and credible plan to reign in deficits is critical to get people really investing in CA and the US.

3. H1-B visa/green card reform: we will be begging for immigrants as the boomers retire and the labor force is strained to support a large demographic suddenly "unproductive" and yet drawing considerable resources at an awkward time in our country's history. Japan and China have similar problems and they're serious. We need to be able to attract the best and brightest and while India and China churn out engineers by the hundreds of thousands, US students want to study Liberal Arts. So we have to go abroad to get key technical talent. It's an unfortunate reality.

4. Energy security for CA and the US are critical for a million obvious reasons ranging from climate change to basic economics and military security.

5. We need to stimulate business investment in the U.S. Let's give corporations a tax break, perhaps tied to investment, to repatriate the trillions of dollars they have in foreign accounts.

I could add reign in unions and entitlements but that one is so obvious it's barely worth posting...

My two cents...

End of the week notes

So LinkedIN is back above $90, Pandora back close to $20. Very exciting for the digital media space. Very enthusiastic for our friends at KP, Sequoia, NEA, Accel, Lightspeed, Greylock and on and on. We are quite sure that the next big story is that venture, by end of 2011, will handily beat the S&P over the last decade and cries about the death of venture over the last few years and how broken the industry has been, while in some ways true, will prove to have been way overblown. The second and third tier players needed to go away and that is happening. We'd like to see some specialists re-emerge and can see some on the horizon. We'd also like to see more angels get organized and that seems to be happening. Innovation lives regardless of debt ceilings, terrorism, politics or sovereign debt. And venture firms continue to make this happen, along with of course the idea people, where it all begins. There will be oversubscribed funds raised over the next 12 months, especially given the exits that are happening right now. The only question will be, how disciplined and whether this creates a capital oversupply problem again. We'll see!

So here's a parting thought for now, for our entrepreneurial clients: THANK YOU for what you do for our society. Not only do you solve important problems but your work and passion lead to job creation and is the foundation of what our country was built upon.