<story><title>&apos;We&apos;re in a Bubble&apos;</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/were-in-a-bubble</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baristaGeek</author><text>For those of us who are young enough (30 or less) to not have witnessed the internet bubble at a conscious age, we might be tricked to think that we&amp;#x27;re in a bubble due to certain indicators. The NASDAQ index, the valuation prices, the money poured into venture capital, etc.&lt;p&gt;To those of you like me I recommend you to read about what was happening in 95-99. The panorama was crazy, and today&amp;#x27;s context doesn&amp;#x27;t compare to the one of those days.&lt;p&gt;At the end, if the macroeconomic environment changes, who cares? Yes, paying attention to the macro is important and that may even imply changes in strategy, but should you not start a startup because there&amp;#x27;s a bubble? Even worse, should you (person who hasn&amp;#x27;t built anything but criticizes everyone who builds something) try to convince your friends not to start startups because we&amp;#x27;re in a bubble?&lt;p&gt;The main difference between today and 1999 is that digital products are actually generating value in people&amp;#x27;s lifes. Please don&amp;#x27;t compare pets.com to WhatsApp</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>greenyoda</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;The main difference between today and 1999 is that digital products are actually generating value in people&amp;#x27;s lifes. Please don&amp;#x27;t compare pets.com to WhatsApp&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not all the tech companies that were hot in 1999 were like pets.com. Google and Amazon were amazing new things back then, and other companies like Dell, Sun and Qualcomm were also high fliers on the NASDAQ. (I&amp;#x27;m old enough to have been an investor in 1999.)&lt;p&gt;I think the most significant difference between the 1999 bubble and today&amp;#x27;s situation is that today, many of the companies with astronomical valuations are not public. For example, if Uber&amp;#x27;s valuation tanks, some employees and some rich investors will unfortunately lose money, but most people will see little effect - if you have a 401-K invested in an S&amp;amp;P 500 index fund, you won&amp;#x27;t care too much. And the big public tech companies that are making money, like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook, probably won&amp;#x27;t be affected much if all venture backed companies disappeared tomorrow (except that their labor market would be flooded with developers). The NASDAQ might take a dip, but it won&amp;#x27;t be like 1999.</text></comment>
<story><title>&apos;We&apos;re in a Bubble&apos;</title><url>http://blog.samaltman.com/were-in-a-bubble</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>baristaGeek</author><text>For those of us who are young enough (30 or less) to not have witnessed the internet bubble at a conscious age, we might be tricked to think that we&amp;#x27;re in a bubble due to certain indicators. The NASDAQ index, the valuation prices, the money poured into venture capital, etc.&lt;p&gt;To those of you like me I recommend you to read about what was happening in 95-99. The panorama was crazy, and today&amp;#x27;s context doesn&amp;#x27;t compare to the one of those days.&lt;p&gt;At the end, if the macroeconomic environment changes, who cares? Yes, paying attention to the macro is important and that may even imply changes in strategy, but should you not start a startup because there&amp;#x27;s a bubble? Even worse, should you (person who hasn&amp;#x27;t built anything but criticizes everyone who builds something) try to convince your friends not to start startups because we&amp;#x27;re in a bubble?&lt;p&gt;The main difference between today and 1999 is that digital products are actually generating value in people&amp;#x27;s lifes. Please don&amp;#x27;t compare pets.com to WhatsApp</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>overcast</author><text>No, let&amp;#x27;s compare it to nonsense like SnapChat being valued at $16 billion. Pets.com generated value, PetSmart&amp;#x27;s $400+ million a year profit can attest to that market. Their issue was horrendous mismanagement of funds, and shipping stuff for more than it was selling. The biggest issue with companies then was going public.</text></comment>