Very sobering report from Silicon Valley

A number of friends in the SF Bay Area have directed me toward this recent slide show by Sequoia Capital, one of the biggest-deal tech VC firms. It's been widely viewed in the tech world and is said to reflect, and no doubt partly shape, the prevailing sentiment. (Update: Also, I see now, it was recently mentioned on the NYT tech blog.)

At least for me, with an ever-shaky internet connection here in Beijing, the 56 slides of this presentation are quite slow to load. But they have a lot of useful data about the origins of the current crisis, plus a lot of chastening advice for companies that want to survive. I introduce them here as part of the effort to shift attention from the purely financial-market disasters of the moment, important as they are, and toward the longer-term implications for the companies that create products, jobs, and real wealth.  

Clickable version below; or this direct link to "Sequoia Capital on Startups and the Economic Downturn." Caveat lector -- by which I mean, in this case, not so much that the reader should beware of the source as that we should beware of the conditions ahead.