Silicon Valley Start-Ups Awash in Dollars, Again – New York Times
Martin Nisenholtz at the Times posts on Facebook that this isn’t going to end well. Damn right, welcome to Bubble 2.0 and its gonna be ugly when the music stops. Facebook at $15 billion? Google valued higher than IBM with eight times less revenue (actually that’s more than I thought they had). Get it while the getting is good. We’ve seen this before and the housing implosion is only going to accelerate it. Nice thoughts on the 20th anniversary of the Crash of 87.
“I have to say I giggled,†Mr. O’Kelley, 30, said of the deal that earned him millions. He has since left Right Media and is starting another company. “There is no way we quadrupled the value of the company in six months.â€The trend is described as a return to madness (by skeptics) or as a rational approach to unlimited opportunities presented by the Internet (by true believers). Greed, fear and a desperate rush to pick the next big winner are all adding fuel to the fire that is Silicon Valley’s resurgence.
“There’s definitely a lot of betting going on, and it’s not rational,†said Tim O’Reilly, a technology conference promoter and book publisher.
Rob O’Regan on the same story
I’m so glad I’m not up there now, although I miss reporting it a lot still. When Google blows up, and it will, people will be jumping in front of electric hybrids en masse.
And there’s brother Batelle, leading the Web 2.0 charge from his stage.
Ugh,
Jim