Rich Moore has more than 20 years' experience in the technology industry having started his career at a Boston-based agency in 1983 with Compaq Computer Corporation, then a start-up, as his first client. After moving to Silicon Valley with the same agency, he began to specialise working with major corporations in the formative stages and went on to become one of four founders of one of America's most successful high-tech agencies, Copithorne & Bellows. The agency grew to around 300 people in 11 offices around the globe before being acquired in 1999 by Omnicom. The agency is now the Convergence Group of Porter Novelli. He has also worked at a major Silicon Valley VC firm, Battery Ventures, as a venture partner. Now, as he embarks on his latest project - a new strategic communications boutique, he talks to The WIRE about the high-tech industry, his experiences, and his plans.

Avoiding hubris is the number one lesson. I don't know that it will prevent another market bust, but I do think the entire technology industry got into a mindset that it was somewhat invincible. For a while, so much was happening so fast, it was impossible to not get caught up in it. It was a very hard lesson but there now is a rational, more measured and longer term view that permeates the technology market and that is very healthy.

Also, reality is now king. Established and young companies are being asked every day for proof that their products and services are in the hands of meaningful customers. Promises, bold proclamations and another big round of funding isn't enough.

Probably the hardest lesson is discovering how devastating the past three to five years have been on the talent pool within high tech marketing and PR. It was a bit like a giant game of musical chairs, and when the high tech market machine ground to a halt, and the music stopped, all the younger marketing and PR people split. So many of my colleagues in large and small agencies are bemoaning just how difficult it is to find qualified young people in our field. Attracting and training the next graduating classes of marketing and PR people is probably our industry's biggest challenge.

It puts you squarely in the middle of everything. No other time in the life of a company do you have the opportunity to see it all come together the way you do with a start up. And it puts you immediately at the executive table. Of course that table could be very small and in some back corner of an obscure office building in the middle of nowhere. But, you're there, at the table with the CEO, the founding team, the investors and increasingly with the early partners and customers. Our industry continues to work hard to earn and retain its strategic seat in our clients' executive suite, and it's always been a big challenge. With start-ups, that's the only seat that exists. You're helping shape the initial perception of the company, developing the right language, emphasising the right thing, uncovering the richness and depth of their story that will help define them.

Our new agency is New Venture Communications. Lisa Kelaita, who previously was the founder of VCPR, and I have formed a new partnership to focus specifically on venture investors, technology companies in their formative stages, and professional service firms who also focus on the technology market. Lisa and I both bring more than 20 years experience from larger agencies as well as smaller ones that we helped start and grow. We have both always had an affinity for younger companies, and we see a tremendous opportunity to focus our time on that category of companies today.

Our focus is very specific - venture investors, technology companies in their formative stages, and professional service firms who share a focus on young tech companies.

Everyone should just let go of the whole discussion about the height of things in Silicon Valley. That was then, this is now. Yes, it is good to reflect back and learn from the past. But, at the same time, let's focus on what's happening now. Google should stand as an example that all was not lost in those previous years. Silicon Valley is so resilient. It reinvents itself all the time. And that's what's happening now.

That could be, but who really knows. Given the past half dozen years, I long ago stopped looking into crystal balls. I do know that one of our clients involved in search engine marketing is giving us tremendous insight into the entire online marketing world. And, given the kind of growth we're seeing and the types of online marketing programmes that major world-leading brands are talking about initiating, I would have to agree that we're just starting to see the power of the Internet as a marketing tool.