In the business news
Ireland’s debt troubles are continuing, and it hasn’t been doing the Euro any favours. Bond yields are spiking and the economy is in bad shape. It looks like they will need to get financial assistance from the IMF and EU. However, as a condition of making this aid available, Ireland’s creditors-to-be are angling to change its tax policy. Ireland’s 12.5% corporate tax rate is one of the lowest in the EU, which has caused a whole bunch of IP-heavy companies to set up large offices there (Google, Microsoft, and some pharma). I wonder what effects this will having.
Is there another startup bubble in the Valley? "Certain areas of the Internet, there are some crazy things going on. Getting overheated. People are getting crazy, they’re showing up to their first meetings with term sheets. In the early stage market, two-, three-person teams are getting $30, $40, $50 million valuations. That’s not right." That sounds pretty crazy. There are lots of very early start-ups that seem to be managing to score $5m valuations as angels (and even some VCs) pile on, but $30-50m?
Meanwhile, the legal market in the US is still sluggish. As biglaw associates around the nation hold their breath waiting for bonuses to get announced (they’re really late this year!), things seem to be going quite healthily in Australia. And Google is hiring like crazy as well: 2,000+ job openings, including more than 50 legal job openings! I know two SLS people who were recently hired for the Brazil and Italy offices.
Twitter is try to raise funding at a $3 billion valuation. A few weeks ago, Michael Arrington wrote that, "The company is still effectively revenue-free." They have their promoted tweets… but they are hardly generating the revenue, let alone profit, that you would expect a $3bn company to generate.
10:11pm 
