Red Herring Comes Back

alinv writes "Red Herring, once the hype bible of the Valley VC economy, has made a comeback. The site was relaunched today. They are trying to pitch the site as an Economist-style, no-bylines gig. More details on the buyout by a French company and relaunch plans here."

Back from the dead

[mnmlst]

Having suffered through an attempt to launch a dot.com in the Spring of 2002, I find this reappearance bittersweet. Let me tell ya, in the Spring of 2002, it looked like a fellow Slashdotter was correct in believing that all the Venture Capitalists had participated in a mass suicide two years earlier. I don't think ANYTHING could get funded at that time other than a successful, working prototype of one of those silly devices that appear in IBM's ads. One of my fellow board members described things perfectly during an interchange between us: Me- "How did we go from these guys funding sock puppets and companies that literally burned piles of cash on Super Bowl ads to being unable to fund ANYTHING?" Him- "VC's are conservative sheep. They only do EXACTLY what all the other sheep are doing." And at that time, the other sheep weren't funding anything. Let's hope this "reappearance of the Red Herring" bodes well for the future. Kind of like the groundhog not seeing his shadow.

Re:Never a more appropriate name

[chrisbtoo]

I remember my first encounter with Red Herring, which was a cutting on the notice board in our office kitchen, talking about how our CEO was leading an up-and-coming business, despite the fact that we all thought there was no future for it.

It took me ages to realise that it wasn't a "the onion" style piss-take.

I just hope...

[esconsult1]

Gosh darn it!

I just hope they won't be as arrogant as they used to be before. I think that almost every slashdotter would agree with me that the level or arrogance coming out of Red Herring during the dot-com boom, probably surpassed the arrogance and self-righteousness that comes out of Wired.

Damn! I'd better stop reading both those magazines.

Re:I see the connection now!

[lanswitch]

I agree. Like the Great Chairman Mao once said: a revolutionary should feel like a fish (!) in the water when he is among the people. And in "the quest for the holy grail" the red-herring reference is in fact a metaphore for the (red) danger lurking in the shrubberies... Or am I getting lost here?

Re:Never a more appropriate name

[Anixamander]

I'm not sure exactly how this publication chose their name, but in investment circles, a Red Herring is the name of the early version of a prospectus that a company puts out to gauge investor interest and reaction before taking a company public.

Re:I just hope...

[freeworld]

It was arrogant, but I thought, in a good way. They did a good job of calling useless companies, like Napster, on their BS. It wasn't mindless cheerleading, like The Industry Standard (whose website was still promising they'd deliver "what you need to succeed in this competitive world" AFTER they had gone bankrupt). Their arena was venture capital; I never found another magazine with that exclusive focus. They also did a good job of focusing on emerging markets, like the Middle East.

Now, their fulfillment department--that was arrogant. I had considered re-starting my subscription in their dying days, but then I received a letter one day saying something like, "I no longer have time to continue asking you to renew. Either do so or we'll remove you from our list." Let's hope this incarnation of Red Herring has a more, eh, mature management.

It's coming around again...

[mikesmind]

Once again, some corporation is trying to make money off of a recognized name. I'm so tired of the Breck commercials on the radio. But, Packard Bell made a good run of it with their bargain priced PC's! One thing's for sure, the new Red Herring will never be like the original. (Not that I really liked it.)

My the grapes are sour today

[Infonaut]

Sure, Red Herring got pretty arrogant back in its first incarnation. But RH was the best place to track what was going on in the Dot-Com economy. I thought the journalistic quality was pretty good, especially considering the alternatives at the time.

Now Red Herring is back, and it seems to be the whipping boy for the Dot-Com era. We can all remember back to those days and blame all the hype and excesses and idiocy of that time on one magazine. But let's be honest - a lot of people bought into the hype in those years, and it wasn't just the writers and editors at Red Herring. In fact, a lot of their articles were pretty sceptical.

If Red Herring's re-emergence means that seed investors are slowly edging back into the technology field, so much the better for those of us who do work in the tech world. I for one like it when there are multiple sources of information and multiple viewpoints. Schadenfreude only gets you so far.