Is There A Social Media Bubble?
Of course there’s a social media bubble. All over the map, everyone ranging from seed-stage investors to the public markets are paying inflated prices for social media assets. But while the current frenzy is a bubble, it doesn’t even come close to the magnitude and madness of the Dot-Com bubble. Back in those days, “eyeballs” […]
The Coming Brick Wall in Venture Capital & Why This is Good for US Innovation
This is the final part of a 3-part series on the major changes in the structure of the software & the venture capital industries. The series started here if you want to read from the start. Or the Cliff Note’s version: Open Source & Cloud Computing (led by Amazon) drove down tech startup costs […]
On Bubbles … And Why We’ll Be Just Fine
I recently spoke at the Founder Showcase at the request of Adeo Ressi. I asked what the audience most needed to hear. He said, “They need an unbiased view of the fund raising environment because there is too much misinformation and everything seems to be changing fast.” This was […]
Is Social the new DotCom?
The term “Social” followed by any noun is exploding into the business lexicon. And it’s beginning to feel like the fairy tale that was the dot com era. Fueled by the Viagra of VC cash, many start-ups had enormous capital, enormous confidence and stiff valuations to match. The motto “get big fast” was the prescribed […]
It’s 1999 Again: The Bubble 2.0 And Talent Wars Of The Silicon Valley
I have been living in the Silicon Valley for a while, and sure enough I haven’t forgotten the dot com days. A few days back, on my way to the San Francisco airport, I saw a billboard by aol advertising that they are cool (again!). I also observed that …
The Art of Riding the Bubble
People are increasingly asking whether there is a Bubble underway in the tech business. The answer is that by the time you know there is a Bubble it’s probably too late to do anything about it. But if all you’re doing is asking whether there is a Bubble, the Bubble is probably not here, yet. […]
Please let there be another internet bubble because this time I won’t screw it up
Internet Bubble 2.0 is firmly entrenched, with stupid valuations of companies that have never turned a profit. For those that remember the halcyon days of 1998 through 2000 where every half-baked idea would get stupid amounts of funding, it is interesting to see the lessons from then not applied to today. At this point I […]
It Can’t All Be Game-Changing
Humans have a weakness (it’s actually physiological, I think): a predilection toward narcissism. As such, we always see whatever time we’re living in as THE crucial time in the span of human history (at every point in history, every one has thought that surely THIS is the critical moment). I mean, with global flattening and […]
