"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" - Churchill
I met Mary Meeker a couple of times in the late 90 at Morgan Stanley conferences. Given my enterprise focus, I was much more aligned
with her colleague, Charles Phillips. But I remember her
passion - and the mind boggling amount of data she was able to collect
and package. No industry (or financial) analyst even came close to what
she had.
She was the cheerleader for AOL, ebay, amazon and other Internet stocks, and through the dark days when the bubble broke, continued to be a fan. Charles left for Oracle and many of her contemporaries have been driven out of the business. Her fellow analysts continue to be wary of her - see here and here. But as she says in this interview many of her Web stocks have bounced back spectacularly.
As this presentation at Stanford a few weeks ago shows she is now positioned to be the cheerleader for Web 2.0 - and backs it up with lots of interesting data.
People will say she lost investors billions. I happen to believe the job of the analyst - financial or industry - is to present data, and let readers make their own mind. From that perspective I am glad she continues to be fanatical about collecting and presenting data. What you do with that is your responsibility - tempting as it may be to credit or blame her for the results.
Mary Meeker: Fanatic
"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject" - Churchill
I met Mary Meeker a couple of times in the late 90 at Morgan Stanley conferences. Given my enterprise focus, I was much more aligned with her colleague, Charles Phillips. But I remember her passion - and the mind boggling amount of data she was able to collect and package. No industry (or financial) analyst even came close to what she had.
She was the cheerleader for AOL, ebay, amazon and other Internet stocks, and through the dark days when the bubble broke, continued to be a fan. Charles left for Oracle and many of her contemporaries have been driven out of the business. Her fellow analysts continue to be wary of her - see here and here. But as she says in this interview many of her Web stocks have bounced back spectacularly.
As this presentation at Stanford a few weeks ago shows she is now positioned to be the cheerleader for Web 2.0 - and backs it up with lots of interesting data.
People will say she lost investors billions. I happen to believe the job of the analyst - financial or industry - is to present data, and let readers make their own mind. From that perspective I am glad she continues to be fanatical about collecting and presenting data. What you do with that is your responsibility - tempting as it may be to credit or blame her for the results.
December 04, 2005 in "New Web" and enterprise computing, People Commentary | Permalink