Comments on: Bubble Indicators

By: Nickp

Nickp — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 07:01:01 +0000

Please. Inexperienced entrepreneurs?

Notable first timers include: everyone really important.

Notable first timers exclude: youtube and skype

By: senapati

senapati — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 08:49:42 +0000

Bubble? There is NO bubble.
The start-ups today are more informed. Moreover, they have the one big factor needed to sustain in today’s markets - a business model.
The concept of “Online Marketplace” is truly coming to life with the way things are going right now. Remember that when you step out, there are a 100 places you can look for clothing, gadgets, books, food, even speed-dating. Nobody complains about any bubble here. Why feel nervous when the web expands its offerings?

As long as people have a way of keeping the cash flowing in, the sugar daddies will always be there to support them and share a percent of the profits.

By: dan

dan — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 21:57:15 +0000

Unfortunately, the VC’s are only interested in sexy new flangled plays, while solid growth companies who have a good track record get passed by for funding. It was sad back in 1998-2000 and its sad once more. Wake up you blue starchy oxford dressshirt clad lemmings!

By: Hongliu Li

Hongliu Li — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:09:58 +0000

I read your article “As Tech Heats Up,Sages Dust Off Bubble Indicators”. I could not agree more.

I myself was a founder of $12M founded bubble company, Hotvoice.com, during year 1999. After 3 years of high rides, I came back to work as an ordinary programmer in Wall Street financial company.

Now, I started another web2.0 company http://www.MyGrowUp.com. During this faddish web2.0 period, I constantly ask myself is this another bubble company? After I spend my own money to do limited advertise campaigns on Google, I am confident that MyGrowUp.com is not a bubble.

The purpose of MyGrowUp.com is for everyone to naturally organize his personal photos/videos in timeline, and safely share among family and friends.

To my surprise, during beta run, the real users are parents who love to use MyGrowUp.com to build digital profile for their kids. We believe these kids will inherit their MyGrowUp profile when grow up.

I wish people will not category MyGrowUp.com to be one of bubble web2.0 company. After more beta try, I will search for fundings.

By: Chris Jacobson

Chris Jacobson — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:38:44 +0000

@bob cobb: What’s rule #1?

By: Alexis Brion

Alexis Brion — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 13:43:39 +0000

I HOPE there is a bubble! BLUB!!

By: Florian Bailey

Florian Bailey — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 12:19:59 +0000

Of Course “Hide Pink Shirt Guy” is a business, they obviously had no development cost, they will get some traffic from digg/reddit/techcrunch and the probably don’t do this as a full time job.

And the have some ads, so I think they will make some money on the side with this site, they won’t become rich but they probably never planned to become rich with it in the first place.

So why exactly is somebody making a site about a funny cutout in his freetime a sign of a business bubble ?

By: Ted - MicroBubble

Ted - MicroBubble — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:24:22 +0000

Absolute bubble. What material value do any of these “new” sites add? The answer: none. The ad money is driven by a very small population portion that has poor conversion rates. Basing ad revenue on impressions won’t hold water in the long run. Facebook looks like the best contender for the newly emerging market, but they are in the 99.99th percentile and they could make big mistakes that generate big backlash maybe bursting their own bubble. The rest are fodder. Too many, too much, and too little value. Social web is simply a small step toward greater integration, it’s not the answer, it’s a bubble.

By: bob cobb

bob cobb — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 03:06:17 +0000

Ban Chris Jacobson for breaking rule #1.

By: Chris Jacobson

Chris Jacobson — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 02:02:24 +0000

Pink Shirt Guy is based on an image posted on popular message board OffTopic.com last year.

By: Cindy Artley

Cindy Artley — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:02:07 +0000

No bubble.

Crap companies fall by the way-side and the one’s that gat $5-$50 million and go nowhere don’t get on-funded.

All businesses need sustainable revenue/earnings streams and the movement to digital by the entire population means that these companies do have enormous socpe for some high margin business. Who cares if it’s advertising; go ask Proctor & Gamble and Kraft if they advertise much, while I don’t know the exact %, a high proportion of their costs go to the cost head. In and off itself it can sustain thousands of $100mm+ businesses. Medium shift means that there is room for lots of winners and plenty of losers.

By: Cindy Artley

Cindy Artley — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 01:01:18 +0000

No bubble.

Crap companies fall by the way-side and the one’s that get $5-$50 million and go nowhere don’t get on-funded.

By: jackmayhofferr

jackmayhofferr — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 23:33:08 +0000

@ 41

And your point is? I enjoy TC. However I find that Duncan could use some common sense. His comment was absurd and added nothing to the thread. You may not agree with me, but my comment was not absurd.

What is absurd are the folks that spam these comments continually and say nothing.

By: Don Jones

Don Jones — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:33:40 +0000

Bob Metcalfe said recently that bubbles are a good thing for technology, since they indicate intense investment in an area. When the bubble bursts, the survivors pick up the pieces for cheap and reassemble them for a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts…

By: Joe

Joe — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 22:23:52 +0000

Bubbles happen when companies stop acquiring companies and then startups are forced to go public. When an inordinate amount of startups go public, that is when you will see a bubble. I work for a very established private company that still needs to raise money. We don’t need to go public because raising money is extremely easy right now. When my company goes public, I know it will be a bubble or close to one.

By: MMT

MMT — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:46:45 +0000

you can never make everyone happy. not enough funding cash and it’s the end of the world. funding picks up and it’s a bubble. my opinion for what it’s worth - probably nothing - is that there isn’t a bubble. just a lot of interest and bets being placed in the social and mobile web. if they all were going to pay off then we wouldn’t call them vcs, we’d call them banks.

By: aquintago

aquintago — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:19:06 +0000

hid the pink shirt guy? it’s all about timing. they submitted their idea the day you decided to post on a bubble.

please let me know when the next time you’re going to bemoan the re-rise of stupid ideas so that I may at that time submit my website.

By: NicolasV

NicolasV — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:13:07 +0000

@37 “Maybe *hopefully* the bubble will burst and we won’t have to be subjected to your non-journalism anymore”

Can you really not avoid clicking on your TechCrunch bookmark, or is there a prize for the most absurd comment today?

By: The Manbehindtheshirt

The Manbehindtheshirt — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:51:30 +0000

I am so cool.

By: chughes

chughes — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:41:54 +0000

Not much wading needed to realize the folks behind the Hide Pink Shirt Guy company are most definitely smoking something or or drinking heavily to have come up with this doozy of an idea.

By: Alaska Miller

Alaska Miller — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:32:13 +0000

Wait wait wait wait… Somebody at TC is complaining about BUBBLES? The whole POINT of TechCrunch is to hype up the bubble and filter out the best ones! Who are you and why are you writing here???

By: jackmayhofferr

jackmayhofferr — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 20:05:11 +0000

Eric

Good post — you failed to mention TC as a bubble company. It is

@ Duncan — WTF, you jump in to correct your editor on the attendance on TC40??? who cares if it was 1000 or 1200. WE GET THE POINT. Maybe *hopefully* the bubble will burst and we won’t have to be subjected to your non-journalism anymore

By: Jonathan Mendez

Jonathan Mendez — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:50:49 +0000

Most advertising spend is still in tv, radio and print, not digital.

Most consumer time is spent in digital.

All that mass media spend is virtually unaccountable to ROAS.

Most of the digital spend is accountable to ROAS.

Those deltas are just getting wider.

Bubble? I don’t think so.

Not even close…

By: Alan Wilensky

Alan Wilensky — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:48:09 +0000

37 signals and those of that sober ilk do not belong in the bubble category. They were incrementally grown like hot-house tomatoes and lovingly tended by their owner / gardeners.

There is a model you can bet on; but as they are almost always captained by fiercely independent types that would never share equity with an outside agency that exists solely to exploit a harvesting strategy.

These organic new age Web application business, many born outside of the valley, often sit on the shoulders of previously successful businesses. 37 Signals, Chicago, a potently viable web design outfit, the outgrowth of the owner’s strategy to make a product they could call their own.

The birth of Ruby on Rails was but a sublime progeny that further propels the industry to somehow liberate itself from the most awful subset of ‘fast time to harvest’ valley VC’s.

I wish I was young again.

By: Jon Wu

Jon Wu — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 18:44:50 +0000

I distinctly remember reading an article in early 2000 in Time Magazine that said in the future, half of all people on earth will be entrepreneurs, and that everyone will be running small startups rather than working regular jobs at companies. And I laughed.

Then the bubble burst.

Then I laughed some more.