What's With the Name?

In the autumn of 2000 I was bored. The dotcom impolosion had left me unemployed and living back in Southern California after many years in Silicon Valley. I began posting messages on a variety of technology-related messageboards and dot-com "deadpools," and sought to create a screen persona that would poke fun at the dotcom bubble and the individuals involved in it.

Sadly, I could think of no good screen names that could make fun of people like "Mary Meeker," "Jack Grubman" and "Henry Blodgett." The obvious dotcom CEOs also gave me few alternatives.

So instead I seized upon an individual named Bill Gurley, a guy who had started out as a securities analyst in the early 90s and quickly moved on to the world of venture capital. He published an email newsletter (later syndicated by CNET) called Above The Crowd, in which he passed along his high-level observations. He had gotten a lot of press during the bubble, including one New York Times Magazine cover for his first company -- ePinions.com -- so to my mind he was fair game.

In retrospect, it's sort of regrettable that I should have chosen to poke fun at Gurley and his newsletter. After all, I had been reading it almost since its inception. And I thought it was really cool! In the early 90s he was talking about a tech-centered universe that was nirvana to those of us in the business. And much of what he predicted turned out to be fairly accurate, even if the bubble those ideas spawned was a disaster.

Besides, whatever else he is and was, Gurley was not one of the bad guys. Sure, one could accuse him of being an overly promotional guy during a fantastically over-promtional era, but it's hard to find fault with him for that. And as I said, his insights were pretty cool and pretty good. He continued publishing his newsletter in blog form for some time and I used to regularly read it. Sadly, he seems to have moved on and the blog has not been updated in a couple of years.

So why stick with the name?

While I do somewhat regret poking fun at Bill, I think he can take it. I actually met him once a while back and think he's a pretty nice guy.

I stick with the name because it makes sense for what I do. While Bill looks at the view from high above and tries to map out long-term strategic possibilities (he is a VC, after all), I try to get in beneath the surface of what's going on now and find hidden problems or hidden gems. At times what I find may cause us to make longer-term predictions, but that's not my real agenda.

Until such a time as I find a better or more descriptive name, or until Bill Gurley sues me, I will continue to be Below The Crowd.

Disclaimer: BelowTheCrowd.com is not in any way affiliated with Bill Gurley, his employer(s), or the Above The Crowd blog.