After selling his startup for $1.2 billion, Yammer CEO calls the end of Silicon Valley

YEREVAN, August 21. /ARKA/. Silicon Valley as we know may be coming to an end, says David Sacks, an early PayPal employee, and the founder of Yammer which just sold to Microsoft for $1.2 billion, San Francisco Chronicle reports.

He declared the (potential) death of Silicon Valley on his Facebook wall, which sparked a debate fr om other players in the Valley, including influential investor Marc Andreessen. (Disclosure: he's also one of Business Insider's investors).
As of this morning, after TechCrunch picked it up, there were 55 comments and 47 likes on the post

He laid out four reasons for the death of the Valley and its startup culture. In order for a startup to be a successful entrepreneur, Sacks says must be able to do the following: esca pe attention of major Internet companies (which Sacks says are better run than ever before); launch and prove a business for ~ $5 million or less (the average seed plus Series A round); find an idea that can be protected (patented) from big companies once they realize what you're up to; avoid patent lawsuits.

"How many ideas like that are left?" he asks.
Andreessen's answer to Sacks: "An infinite number -- human creativity is lim itless -- which doesn't make it easy, but does mean the opportunity is unending," he writes.
Other investors such as Mark Suster and Shervin Pishevar chimed in too. Pishevar sides with Andreessen and says one of his portfolio companies, Uber, proves that there's no shortage of creativity.

"As technology and innovation continue to spread to all 7 billion people on this planet, especially via mobile, human creativity continues push the boundless boundaries ahead of us," Shervin writes. "There are growth opportunities for big companies and momentarily small startups." —0--