

Maples: Yes, There's a Bubble - yakto
http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/01/angel-turned-vc-mike-maples-yes-theres-a-bubble/

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dasil003
Bla bla bla. Everyone just says whatever is in their best interest for others
to believe, because really no one has clue one.

Hey maybe peak oil will be way worse than we anticipated and it'll turn out
that this whole capitalism thing was in fact a huge bubble.

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tansey
Why does it always have to be "bubble or correct valuations"? Can't it just be
a somewhat overbought market?

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nostrademons
It's never "correct valuations" either. It's always "bubble" or "bust",
sometimes both at the same time.

Sensationalist headlines always grab more attention. "There's no story here"
isn't a particularly good story.

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JonnieCache
_“Is there a tech bubble? Rounded off to the nearest yes, yes”_

This is a great phrase, but I think it should be "the nearest boolean" unless
he was trying to be clever.

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fedd
let's remember about software startups. a lil bit longer time to profit, but
no bubble (i think)

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InclinedPlane
Of course there's overvaluation, that's inevitable when people invest based
solely on whether other people are investing rather than based on their own
sound and experienced understanding of a particular company and it's
prospects.

However, this isn't 1999 anymore. The amount of real value in internet
business is huge today, and the industry is more mature. Web companies take in
hundreds of billions of dollars a year in revenue and the longest lived have
been profitable for a decade or more. Meanwhile, though valuations are
occasionally high the craziness from the first dot-com bubble has been much
tempered. Investors aren't dumping millions into niche companies with no
revenues, no history, and no business plan, they might be making risky bets
from time to time but the risk is much reduced from the wild west era. Overall
these factors add up to bubble protection measures. It's simply much harder
for a true speculative dot-com bubble to build up and to burst.

Instead we'll likely see dot-com companies meld into the same pattern as
traditional companies, as sane investing takes hold and subject matter
expertise becomes more common. Every industry, no matter how old, goes through
periods of boom and bust, but generally the amplitude of these fluctuations is
small enough for the economy to handle it.

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georgieporgie
Is Groupon's revenue sustainable? I thought companies were complaining that
they lost money by participating, which would indicate to me that it's not
sustainable business.

I'm highly skeptical of Zynga because I haven't seen any evidence that they
can innovate at all. I suspect people will tire of grind games, and I wonder
if Zynga will be able to adapt. Maybe that's just my wishful thinking, that my
family will abandon its addiction...

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gte910h
>Is Groupon's revenue sustainable? I thought companies were complaining that
they lost money by participating, which would indicate to me that it's not
sustainable business.

Someone wrote a bad article with worse graphs showing that 40% of people did
not make more money _while the promotion was going on_. It had horrible
methodology, and didn't even point out the food service business loses money
on MOST things it does, and this is actually a very small rate of loss for
"things you can do to boost sales".

[Not associated with nor have I ever used groupon]

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jdp23
TL;DR summary: “Is there a tech bubble? Rounded off to the nearest yes, yes”

