Intellectual Capital vs. Benjamins: Sun, Yahoo and Microsoft

According to Internet News, after Friday's announcement of a $34 million dollar loss, Sun Microsystems stock is currently down 23 per cent of its market value. Blaming the poor state of the US economy and their $52 million dollar tax bill, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz announced plans to reduce the workforce by 1,500.

Meanwhile, Yahoo engineers breathed a sigh of relief after Microsoft's Steve Ballmer withdrew his offer to acquire Yahoo citing Google-related ad outsourcing as the undesirable last straw.

MIND OVER MONEY
What's it feel like to have all of the intellectual capital, class and integrity in the world and still have to hustle like a mofo to break even? It feels like being Canadian.

Yahoo and Sun have two of the best R&D departments in the world, with some of the best minds running them, and yet there still seems to be a problem turning a profit. Canadian James Gosling created the Java programming language for Sun Microsystems and every computer science graduate in the country owes a good portion of their knowledge to Sun. How can a group so revered by the industry still manage to fail with investors?

I've been reading about the quality of Yahoo and Sun's employees and I can't help but wonder, why are so many great minds waiting to get snatched up by big companies rather than forging their own path? Venture capitalists don't invest in ideas, but in the belief that a solid team will execute them. If you're talented and you've got a success under your belt, you can bet your ass your name and past projects are part of your company's pitch to investors.

I'm just a lowly writer with a love of words, programmers and entrepreneurship, but when I think about the industry, I think about Timothy Leary and his anthem "Turn on, tune in, drop out". If someone raised funding off of a slide show and your bio, then you're ready to start your own team. Find an opus and go for it.

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Intellectual Capital vs. Benjamins: Sun, Yahoo and Microsoft

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