Mike I was pleased to see your tweet yesterday about returning Silicon Valley to its earlier focus on products (and presumably users of those products).

I think there's a good way to put this idea into action. Create a process where products are funded because they contribute new open formats and protocols to the mix. The last X years have been sucking the life out of the good beginnings of the open web.

There's a lot of cynicism in the tech industry about keeping choice open for users. The result has been stagnation. As you note, most "tech" news is about shuffling orgcharts, movement of money, me-too products.

Start some companies with people whose first love is the technology, not IPOs, or capturing users with lock-in. Fund companies who have the guts to give users choice.

Another way of looking at it, this industry was founded by hippies who created new tech for love. Nowadays the sliderule and pocket calculator crowd have taken over. Not that we don't need them too. But we need some people who do this stuff for love. The money people laugh when you say that. But it's still true.