Even after decades following the software entrepreneur scene here in Seattle, I find myself continually surprised to discover such a diversity of established software companies that I've never even heard about. For instance, at our Selling Up Selling Out conference here last week, there were more new folks than old friends. Somehow I expected when I chatted with them I'd find mostly fairly fresh start-ups with a few people, and a lot of Web n.0 plays. Instead I found folks in business for many years, with dozens of employees, who had carved their way into niches I had never considered the existence of. I brought a moment of perspective on the breadth of software businesses around the world, which got me to thinking that Moore's law is like cosmological inflation the way it's made such a big universe for software companies to keep trying to fill. Nothing that profound, but it's no wonder software M&A is so different than the financial aspects of the rest of the economy.