By Ed Frauenheim, 10 May 2005 11:10
NEWS Mauro Bonomi has another wad of venture capital cash and is hiring tech talent again in the United States - but not like he did during the dot-com boom.
Bonomi recently landed about $10m in venture funding for his company, Minerva Networks, which makes software that lets phone companies offer television services. This year, the 65-person California-based company aims to hire 30 to 35 people, half or more of them likely to be computer professionals based in Silicon Valley or other parts of the US.
Rapid growth, to be sure. But Bonomi says he would have brought on close to 80 people if the year were still 1999, when he led a software company focused on the DVD-publishing market and was part of the era's culture: hire first, figure out how to increase revenue second.
"The approach is going to be more cautious," Bonomi said. "Companies are trying to drive the top line before they add the people."
As Bonomi suggests, technology professionals have reason to be cautiously optimistic about jobs at start-up companies. Venture capitalists have been raising new funds at a fast clip, and the money is expected to fuel a new wave of investments in fields including energy, wireless communications and the internet. But the scale of the funding is not likely to rival that of the last internet craze, and some of the positions created by new companies are likely to be located offshore.
Even so, says Laura Roden, who sits on the board of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, new infusions of venture capital and seed money from individual "angel" investors are translating into real jobs again for computer pros in Silicon Valley.
"It seems to me that there is a resurgence," said Roden, who knows scores of managers and experienced software developers in the region. "The good people are all being hired."
A flurry of hiring by new tech companies is good news to workers in the tech industry, who weathered hundreds of thousands of job cuts in the wake of the internet bust.
Ed Frauenheim writes for CNET News.com
Comments
There is 1 comment. Join the discussion
1. Dick Winchester
Got really excited for a second. Thought you were talking about the UK. Silly me. Should have realised when you mentioned the $10m. That's about the total that our erstwhile VCs put into Scottish startups during the whole of 2004!