Paul Kedrosky led off the business and finance discussion.

Highlights

• “In a sense, superficially, it sure feels like a bubble. But, so what? … It takes a lot of dead bodies to fill a swamp. We’ve gotta do this stuff. Screw it up and waste a ton of money. We’ll get there by piling up a lot of bodies. … There’s way too much enthusiasm.”
• “There’s as much money out there as there was at the bubble time. It’s more concentrated among the top tier of venture capital firms. … The trouble is that there’s this idea that the best firms are always the best. … The best venture investors fish from a very well stocked pond. … The problem for everyone else in the venture industry is that they’re fighting for scraps. These people have been given massive capital and they’re all searching around for a place to put it. … There’s a lot of people with a lot of capital trying to find homes for it. And web 2.0 happens to be a beneficiary of it.”
• “The nice thing about web 2.0 companies is that you can do them very cheaply. … There’s a kind of democratization of entrepreneurship. … However, this comes with a downside. As soon as an opportunity comes along, 30 people rush in to fill it.”
• In the last six months, the pendulum is swinging from the consumer side to the business side of web 2.0.
• An example of web 2.0 companies that are making money? Plentyoffish.com
  
• “It’s easy to start thinking of features as products. Because if it’s so cool to me, why aren’t people paying for it? People should not kid themselves.”
• “AdSense is absurdly risky. In essence, I have one customer. If Google decided to change their business tomorrow…”
• “The challenge in Canada is to get the deal flow that venture capitalists require. … Canadians see relatively fewer examples of people who have been successful in soliciting venture capital. … We need to have more prominent exits so that others in the community can do this as well.”
• “Polaris and Kodiak both have a track record of investing in Canada.”

People can always dream…