Go-Away Money
Tuesday, July 23, 1996 by Dave Winer.
DaveNet Donahue 
I like it. I can do it. First I did the midnight keynote at MacHack in June, and in July I did DaveNet Live at the San Jose Convention Center as part of the Mactivity conference. Every time I do one of these I want to do another. Put a mike in my hand. An audience in front. I roll up my sleeves. Turn on the tunes. I move into the audience. We chat. It's cool. We talk about personal stuff without getting personal. It's animated. Multimedia! No one reads the newspaper. I can do this. And I like doing it.
So, I know where I want to do the next one -- at Stewart Alsop's Agenda conference in September in Palm Springs. I sent Stewart an email yesterday and asked if I could have an hour with the Agenda crowd. He sent back a thoughtful message. He's a venture capitalist now. He wants to do due diligence. I said I'd support him. And you can help.
There are lots of a Agendees on the DaveNet list. Hey, that's how it got started. Coool. So, if you'd like to check out what DaveNet looks like with an audience, and participate in the evolution of something interesting, send him an email, stewart_alsop@infoworld.com. Ask him to give me a chance. We'll have fun. But please, only send mail if you are going to attend Agenda this September. Thanks!
Go-Away Money
I got a call from John Doerr, jdoerr@kpcb.com, one of the valley's leading venture capitalists. I know John thru my association with Symantec, we were both on its board of directors in the late eighties. He's backed lots of successful high tech ventures, including Sun, Compaq, Lotus and Netscape. John is intense! He takes risks, and sticks his neck out. Doerr has focus, and sometimes this frustrates people who work with him. But watch out when he focuses on something, because something could happen.
He talked, I listened. Politics! A proposition on the November ballot that threatens to completely change the rules of operating a corporation in California. It will make the lawyers more powerful. Much more! It would cripple the high tech financial system. It'll be impossible to manage a company, not just in California, because the prop covers all companies that have shareholders that live in California. Only fools will expose themselves. Only fools will invest. Make sure you're broke before you go public. Hmmm. How does that work?
In Spider Web, 7/12/96, I wrote about this as a new moon mission web project. A chance to develop new collaborative technology. A successor to the 24 Hours of Democracy project. Holding hands in cyberspace.
I did my homework. I read a bunch of articles about Proposition 211 and assembled them into a web page at:
http://www.scripting.com/strikesuits/
Anyone who cares about technology should read the articles. Anyone who owns stock in any company with a presence in California. Any journalist that covers business or cares about jobs.
It's a revolutionary proposition, designed to establish a new high growth branch of the legal profession -- lawyers who wait for a stock's price to dive, then attack, and get their go-away money.
Freedom is something everyone must enjoy or else there's no freedom for anyone. Money counts. I want growth. I want people to keep their jobs. Anyone other than the attack attorneys should want this too.
On the positive side, this is an opportunity to organize the resources of the web, the high flow sites and individual home pages, small companies and large ones; and cover this story from every angle. The web is already opposed to the proposition. There's huge support from the companies Doerr has invested in, and he's working on organizing the venture capital community, and the companies they support. It's already a very big project, and it's just starting.
It's a no-brainer for me, this is a cause I support, and I like it because it will help make web energy flow in new ways. New technology applied to guaranteeing the right to make new technology. Makes sense to me.
We'll do a great network of websites. We'll have fun. Ten-minute response time. We'll win! It'll be cool.
Your help will be requested. Tune into the website. First get educated. Come back next week for a call to action.
Thanks!
Dave Winer