Of course, this depends entirely on the ultimate outcomes. Apples to apples comparisons are really dangerous on this topic.

I don’t see how this would be true, except by increasing our inbound funnel of startups to evaluate for Series A/B/C investments, which is good for us.

All three of those companies went on to be funded by Silicon Valley VCs who won big from their success.

I don’t know if we @A16Z count as “most distinguished”, but we don’t view accelerators like YC as an existential threat. They seem entirely complementary.

True!

Why?

• Such a crisis can significantly raise a company’s visibility – and the recovery can become a major and positive component of the company’s brand.

• Such a crisis can catalyze a team to really pull together – and can strengthen a company’s culture.

• Such a crisis can force a company to face up to and fix latent but growing problems.

With the assumption that the recovery is managed properly.

Dan Gilbert is helping lead a fascinating revitalization effort in Detroit. Coincidentally this story just came out: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/magazine/the-post-post-apocalyptic-detroit.html?_r=0

“We know about all of those other services like MOSAIC but we’re not going to give you those.” This is the kind of attitude, widespread at the time, that has since led to the collapse of credibility of corporate IT in many organizations and the rise of “Bring Your Own Device” and individual/department-level adoption of technologies like the web, Box/Dropbox, Skype, and RapGenius (yes!) beyond the control of corporate IT.

In this period, computer security (“hacker”) paranoia was running sky-high even though there were virtually no serious hackers in existence by today’s standards, and virtually nothing on the Internet worth hacking.

In 1994, large organizations considered it sensible to have only a single PC attached to the Internet. You would have to stand in line to use it, and you would have to be happy you had that much.