Catching the wave

A story in this morning's Deal Book in the NY Times under the headline, "A Silicon Bubble Shows Signs of Reinflating" reports on some growing sentiment that the tech world may be headed for another bust.

Whether or not this happens, time, of course, will tell. One thing we do know from experience, however, is that few people see these of surges coming or going.  They start and end without much warning. For the lucky few standing around at the outset,  fame and fortune seem to come easy.

Two books published this year tell us about about a few young guys, about the same age as today's tech entrepreneurs, who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. They are: Frank:The Voice, James Kaplan's biography covering Frank Sinatra's early years,  and "Life",  the extraordinary autobiography of Keith Richards, lead guitarist of The Rolling Stones.

Frank Sinatra had the talent and the drive for a successful singing career at the height of the big band era. It was the development of high-quality microphones, night club connections through phone lines to new radio networks,  and hordes of teen aged girls with radios in their bedrooms ( and boyfriends fighting the war) that turbo-charged the young crooner's career.

Moving forward into the U.K. in the early 60s,  Richards and his band mates were on a mission to become the best rhythm and blues band in London.  It just so happened that a whole generation of young music fans -- many of them delirious young women -- were coming of age with a taste for American rock and roll and desperately seeking some color in their drab post-war lives. Without any idea of what they were getting into, the Stones set off on a journey that, remarkably, has yet to end.

These two books, it appears to us, tell us more about the dynamics of bubbles or waves or manias -- whatever you want to call them -- than than all the models and business plans you can digest.