Facebook bought revenueless Instagram for $1 billion in 2012. Snapchat, the revenueless sexting app, is now valued at $10 billion.
There are so many examples like this. And like 1999, no one seems to care.
Silicon Valley investors keep writing huge checks. “Likes” are the new valuation metric. Not profits.
Several top Silicon Valley insiders are now hoisting the red flag saying enough is enough.
Bill Gurley, one of the most successful venture capitalists in the world, told the Wall Street Journal last week that “Silicon Valley as a whole . . . is taking on an excessive amount of risk right now. Unprecedented since ’99.”
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures echoed this sentiment on his blog, railing against the widely accepted model that it’s acceptable for companies to be “[b]urning cash. Losing money. Emphasis on the losing.”
George Zachary of Charles River Ventures wrote, “It reminds me of 2000, when investment capital was flooding into startups and flooded a lot of marginal companies. If 2000 was a bubble factor of 10, we are at an 8 to 9 in my opinion right now.”
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