Bear Stearns and Me

Wednesday, July 11, 2001 by Dave Winer.

Bear Stearns 

Bear Stearns is a big investment banking company headquartered in New York.

On Monday morning I did a conference call for analysts, venture capitalists and investment bankers hosted by Chris Kwak, an analyst who covers technology at Bear Stearns. The subject was SOAP, XML-RPC, Web services, Passport, Hailstorm, Windows, scripting, developers, AOL, application servers, Frontier, Radio, etc. You can hear a replay of the call by dialing 888-888-9540 in the US, International 402-220-9917, PIN: 3336, through July 16.

I really enjoy explaining new technology to investors, and from what Chris tells me, they liked hearing from a person who really does development, and isn't selling pet food or promoting other weird business models. This is a sign that perhaps some sobriety and respect are returning to the tech investment environment, that technology may again have a chance to attract investment, and that independent software developers have a voice that matters. As always, none of this can work unless we work together. Some projects will make money, and others will build infrastructure and guarantee choice and probably not make money, but will still be worth doing. Technology has never been an easy investment, the euphoria which is dead-dead-dead masked that for a few years. To do this well, we have to communicate, and Monday's conference call was an excellent beginning.

Also many thanks to the US Court of Appeals for standing up for independent software developers. They didn't make a distinction between one operating system or another, they didn't protect commercial developers in favor of open source developers, or vice versa. They said they want independent developers to have a chance, and that's more support than we've gotten from our opinion leaders who seem to want to hand the whole thing to Microsoft or their adversary du jour. I want diversity and choice and a steady way for new ideas to enter the market. I'm glad that our government agrees.

So thanks to the court and to Chris and Bear Stearns for letting indepedent developers have a voice, and hopefully a strong future.

Dave Winer