John C. Dvorak writes in his column today:
Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust. It’s déjà vu all over again. And since this moment in time is only the beginning of the cycle, the best nuttiness has yet to emerge. Nevertheless, this is not to say that a lot of nuttiness hasn’t already happened.
I can only partially agree him… Yes, the same copycat, cookie-cutter business models exist. Yes, each startup is some form of ad revenue backed search engine, or social-networking functionality to lock in eyeballs for monetisation at a later date – hopefully before the VC money runs out. Yes, there’s a lot of hype in the investment community, most obviously illustrated by plumbing companies like Cisco buying social networking sites such as Tribe.net – nuts!
I disagree with him on the eventual fall out. Bubble 1.0 is different in economic terms to Bubble 2.0. During 1999-2000, each and every half-baked business idea sought several rounds of investment before launching itself on the stock market via an IPO. We saw lots of Bubble 1.0 companies edging out traditional economic giants that had been build up over a century or more. Then when the floor well out of those startups, the stock markets went with them causing the economic down turn.
Bubble 2.0 companies are different, they seek acquisition buy a Bubble 1.0 survivor instead of stockmarket IPO, e.g. Youtube attracting the attention of Google, therefore we’ll avoid the stockmarket collapses of 2000 and social impact of those events in the years following.
