On the surface, this is another window into the 2010's tech bubble, a period where mediocre people could raise ludicrous money amid a venture capitalist echo chamber fueled by low-interest rates. But what makes this any worse than Juicero, Clinkle, or Humane? Why does this rise to the level of Theranos?
It has been a bubble now for 13 years. I disagree here. Maybe it's just the new normal? Comparisons between now the the '90s do not hold up. Tech companies today are much bigger, but also generating huge profits, unlike the 90s bubble, in which tech companies were much less profitable or unprofitable relative to valuations.
lol "people could raise ludicrous money" What? Where? Funding rounds are much smaller, more competitive, and more selective today compared to in the 90s. Hardly anyone except for a few lucky people (like the founders of Coinbase or Dropbox) are getting rich overnight anymore, unlike in the 90s. Founders are being offered table scraps worth of funding compared to the generous, multi-million-dollar funding rounds that were common in the 90s.
This is made worse by the fact that running a tech company is more expensive than ever in terms of the complexity of the product (interactive apps are waaaayyy harder to develop than a static html store) and marketing (everything is so expensive and saturated compared to the 90s. Ads are obscenely expensive today and full of click/viewer fraud and worthless, inflated metrics.) and labor costs (coders are much better paid today compared to the 90s relative to inflation).
People really forget what it was truly like in the 90s. If you could breathe and knew how to turn a computer on, you could get a job in tech. The hiring was that desperate and that easy. The fundraising was that easy too. Everyone just assumed that you even knew what a computer was that you could figure the rest out.
That all changed with the Russian ruble crisis, which hit finance first late in '98 and then took another year for its effects to start hitting the tech industry hard. By 2001 the game was up and it really took until the 2010s to turn around.
Actually in the late 00s and early 2010s it was actually really gross and sort of like crypto. I remember a lot of smooth talking dudes around NY who were raising all kinds of VC money and doing _nothing_ with it but finding shady ways to spend it on themselves/drugs. The money was free and the accountability was absent. That era really didn't last more than about 3-5 years.
You know something about this? It's just money being moved around between the rich, middle class and poor. Each cycle ends when that resource extraction is complete (or rinsing).
In general, running a tech company is harder (more complex) than running other kinds of companies but offers significant rewards if you can do it well.
The new normal (from the invention of the internet on) would be that tech companies are more competitive, pay better, and have higher risk.
It has been a bubble now for 13 years. I disagree here. Maybe it's just the new normal? Comparisons between now the the '90s do not hold up. Tech companies today are much bigger, but also generating huge profits, unlike the 90s bubble, in which tech companies were much less profitable or unprofitable relative to valuations.
lol "people could raise ludicrous money" What? Where? Funding rounds are much smaller, more competitive, and more selective today compared to in the 90s. Hardly anyone except for a few lucky people (like the founders of Coinbase or Dropbox) are getting rich overnight anymore, unlike in the 90s. Founders are being offered table scraps worth of funding compared to the generous, multi-million-dollar funding rounds that were common in the 90s.
This is made worse by the fact that running a tech company is more expensive than ever in terms of the complexity of the product (interactive apps are waaaayyy harder to develop than a static html store) and marketing (everything is so expensive and saturated compared to the 90s. Ads are obscenely expensive today and full of click/viewer fraud and worthless, inflated metrics.) and labor costs (coders are much better paid today compared to the 90s relative to inflation).