In Silicon Valley, return to humbler tech dreams

FOR five years, the future surged against the windowpanes of Jamis MacNiven's Silicon Valley restaurant in wave after wave of fresh-faced MBAs.

They came as panhandlers of the New Economy - business-school graduates clutching tech magazines, pressing their noses to the glass to match the faces inside with photos of venture capitalists.

This was where Netscape and Hotmail began. This was where the young and precocious got the money to turn their billion-dollar ideas into offices of Ethernet ports and beanbag chairs. For many, the kitsch and pancakes of Buck's of Woodside was the starting line for the dotcom dream.

But today "the predators," as Mr. MacNiven calls them, have vanished. There is no wait. And the 104 strike marks over the door - the number of TV crews that came here - are a cheeky testament to a bygone time.

Amid the rubble of a toppled tech economy, America's ultimate boomtown is learning how to live in lean times.

For most who came here to make their fortunes during one of the greatest gold rushes of the 20th century, the collapse has been a disaster. Many have left. Many are jobless. Some with jobs have left dreams of instant riches behind along with 18-hour days.

The buzz, they say, is gone.

Yet even as the Silicon Valley of the late 1990s slips into lore, others say a different one is emerging.

It is a place of Chinese takeout and teleconferences, not braised rabbit and all-expense-paid trips to Maui's south shore. It is breakfast at Buck's, without the gawkers. Engineers and scientists are once again king.

Indeed, many say these past two years have not merely been a downturn, but a purge, and the new Silicon Valley is getting back to its roots.

"Silicon Valley is gradually returning to something more normal," says James Forcier of Bay Analytics, a consulting firm in San Francisco.

Not that Silicon Valley's normal is all that ordinary. Even amid the tech depression, Buck's of Woodside is a caldron of pure capitalism.

Someone from a local bank flits between two tables during the breakfast hour; MacNiven says he often comes here two to three times a day for business meetings. On tables, reports and charts stack as high as flapjacks. Napkins double as syrup-stained sketch pads. Each group of tieless men greets with handshakes.

With its Wild West murals and cosmonaut suit hanging from the ceiling, Buck's décor is only slightly less surreal than the revelation that some company called PayPal was sold for $1.6 billion at a nearby seat.

But that sale was back in the old days. Sure, the venture capitalists still come - as on this morning. But there are fewer of them, and they are more careful. One bankroller to the startups, who recently raised $1 billion, didn't collect it because he couldn't find a good investment.

"We have never seen a downturn like this," says MacNiven, who has become part celebrity, part commentator as owner of Buck's.

It's a note of caution that sounds in every chord coming from Silicon Valley. Never before has a downturn cut this deep - touching everything from telecom to dotcom. And never before has this cluster of Bay Area cities had to come down from such success - and excess.

Christy Lamagna, a planning and marketing consultant, still speaks as if she's not sure the boom really happened. Laughing, she recalls when she told one client that his company trip to Maui would cost $2.1 million - $1 million less than budgeted.

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