Technology Slice Blog

Would you Invest in Facebook - In the old days (the 1990s), small companies could sell their stock in the public markets at reasonable cost, just like big companies. This allowed smaller, more speculative companies to raise money, and it gave investors who liked to invest in smaller, more speculative companies more opportunities to consider. In those days, investors who liked speculating on risky tech companies had plenty to choose from. Risky tech companies, meanwhile, could raise capital easily to fund their growth. Would you Invest in Facebook And how did both sides do? Well, sometimes these speculative bets worked out (Cisco, Amazon, Netscape, Yahoo, et al). Sometimes they didn't (hundreds of other companies that seemed like a good idea at the time). But both sides understood--or should have understood--the risks involved, and the market facilitated the free flow of capital and served both constituencies. But then, in an effort to protect investors from fraud (which...