Q&A with Mark Jensen, Head of Deloitte's VC Services Group
Last week, in the middle of a stomach-churning afternoon on Wall Street, I rang Mark Jensen, a partner and the National Director for the Venture Capital Services Group at Deloitte & Touche to see how his firm is faring. Jensen shared a few thoughts with me, including why despite the gloom that has enveloped Silicon Valley, he is filled with a kind of joyful anticipation. You’ve been in this industry since 1994. Where do you think we are on the spectrum of bad to worst? I think we’re at stage one. We’ve seen the meltdown, certainly in the financial services industry. Now the news we’re seeing today is that, okay, we really are in a recession. But this feels differently than anything I’ve seen before. I’m not suggesting we’re heading into the second Great Depression. But it’s comprehensive. This downturn involves the financial system, homeowners, and consumers. And when you think about the tech industry, you realize that a lot of products are sold into the consumer products market, whereas in previous downturns, most of the tech was being sold into other companies. It was focused on the information technology used by large enterprises. So you think tech companies are about to be walloped. Well, yes, as you start to look ahead, it looks like tech companies are going to be hit, and what you’re seeing is a complete tightening of the belts trying to get ready for it. You could say that we’re causing our own recession because no one is spending anything
