Winter is coming. It is not the winter in the weather and seaonal sense. It is for startups.

With the financial crisis gets worse in US, which is no longer news, the recent reaction in Venture Capital market in Silicon Valley is huge. Signaled a bunch of emails and meetings by top VC firms and others, everyone just realized what the slight change in temperature means: it means the arrival of winter.

We saw Sequoia’s Get Real or Go Home presentation.  We saw Alan Patricof’s Chill Out memo. Ron Conway wrote an email Get Ready For It To Suck which is simply a resent one that he wrote in 2000. Benchmark’s Adapt and Live Lean memo went out, and finally John Borthwick’s Don’t Panic – Profit memo. (I got the article list from Feld’s Thoughts)

My 2 Cents

I feel lucky that I am experiencing a winter myself as a participant. There are Internet bubble burst around 2000 and 2001. I was not directly involved – work in Microsoft does not seem to exposed me to the change in that deals.

This time, I finally have the chance to face the environment change, and then make decisive decisions to adopt the change. This is very different senario for me than the last time.

I also believe it is the best time for real Internet companies. By real, I mean people who loves Internet, and want to do something, instead of just gambling. Great companies are those who come out of the shadow of a big crisis. I think we are very well prepared, and we even designed to have a warm hot-pot on the table when it is snowing outside.