These stories just make me sigh.

So which is it? Is it good that some of us are here to navigate the ups and downs and frankly could give two shakes about where the outside market is (beyond figuring out what the coupon on our venture debt is or where the herd VC mentality is going to be this week?) Or is it just plainly bad that some of us are happy and able to be creative and productive regardless of the conventional wisdom?

Arrington has an interesting conflict of interest. He is potentially playing a game of false modesty for becoming this cycle's Henry Blodget (so far.)

What bugs me about talk of bubble/no bubble is that it just doesn't at all matter beyond minor business environment effects. If the product that entrepreneurs are making serves customers in a more efficient and needed way and there is a group of skilled (or quick learning) people around it, that company/product will do very well.

Not being able to adjust as an entrepreneur to the business climate and being forlorn that the shift is toward marketing - well, that just says that your team isn't well rounded. How about this hypothesis. Maybe a whole bunch of the serious folks in the valley used the last downturn as a product development cycle and now those products are leaving the dev cube farm, crossing the chasm, and need to turn toward marketing and scaling? Maybe that's why we all aren't focused on "the garage man." Maybe we're actually really building all aspects of businesses.

But that would be too quaint and too mundane for the valley...