"RSS Investors" fund and The Sign Of The Bubble

"RSS Investors" is a new venture-capital fund, with goals:

RSS Investors Announces Creation of $100 Million Technology Fund
Thursday June 30, 10:32 am ET
Leading Technology Experts, Internet Pioneers and Venture Capitalists to Support RSS-Related Internet Technology Companies

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 30, 2005--RSS Investors, LP, today announced the creation of the first investment fund specializing in companies based on the Really Simple Syndication (RSS) family of standards and services. This technology includes OPML and the newly proposed Microsoft extensions to RSS and is rapidly becoming integral to the next generation of Internet technology.

It is a Sign. The Sign Of The Bubble.

The start sign is small private venture capital funds. The end sign is hot public mutual funds.

Of course, RSS is just a protocol. The fund really seems to be about the wonderful world of the businesses which can be built by exploiting people's dreams of being heard and having influence. Remember, vanity press is a publishing business.

I don't think it's an intrinsically bad idea from a business perspective, though it's a tough, low-margin, market. But they also seem to have people who can work that market. Many Usual Suspects are major players. Some other analysis is lukewarm.

Note, these sorts of undertakings are where "the money" is. It's not in salaries for academic appointments. Rather, one big payday for those types of people is from being able to participate in such business opportunities.

It's not for me (I suspect I'll never be enough of a "club-member" to get any piece of that kind of action). But it does objectively suggest there's some opportunities arising.

There's an old oil-business prayer, from years ago:

"O Lord, just give me one more oil boom - I promise not to piss it all away this time."

O Lord, just give me one more tech bubble, one more collective financial insanity where I might be able to get founder's stock and be bought-out for absurd amounts of money in a ridiculously short time. I promise not to waste it all away this time doing censorware decryption and fighting for net-freedom.

Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog (Wikipedia, Google, censorware, and an inside view of net-politics) - Syndicate site (subscribe, RSS)