Build Something Great. Destruction or Rebirth

OK everybody, enough about the downturn, credit squeeze and how much less money, your savings and your house are worth. We all get it, and at least we all (or at least everybody I know) went down the net worth slide together. Let’s get back to work.

I liked the reporting at the Tech Crunch Crunchy awards over the weekend. There are some good reminders in this post by Erik Schonfeld.

Facebook once again won the overall prize for the second year in a row, and Mark Zuckerberg also picked up the best CEO prize. During his acceptance speech, Zuckerberg’s message to all the other entrepreneurs in the audience was that even during an economic downturn they can build something great and become a beacon of light for the rest of the industry. Microsoft’s Ray Ozzie, who was on hand to accept the prize for Best Technology Achievement, struck a similar chord:

When we are in an environment with technological and environmental change, you have to focus on these new huge constraints, but also new opportunities for destruction or rebirth.

Yes! Let’s hear it for a breath of fresh air and a reminder that business is still business, and what works is doing something that, well, with apologies for the redundancy, works. Like the winners said.

The easy VC money might have stopped flowing to startups, but that doesn’t mean the world has stopped. I was acutely reminded of that fact simply by watching the hardened optimism of everyone in the theater. Some people compare the Crunchies to the Oscars of Tech, but we like to think of it more as a large family gathering. For all the blogs involved–GigaOM, VentureBeat, Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch–it’s our way of saying, “Thank You” to all the startups and tech companies out there. If they didn’t keep striving to become that beacon of light, we’d have nothing to write about.

Note: I got the photo from Techbays.

Tagged as: Facebook, microsoft, Ray Ozzie, Techcrunch