Hacker News Reader

Me in 2001 (dot com crash): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2007 (market malaise): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2012 (Facebook IPO): "the web gold rush seems to be over"

Me in 2019 (finally having learned my lesson): there are probably still plenty of opportunities left, if you know where to look

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Exactly - neither positive nor negative.

When I first moved to Palo Alto in 1984 the houses were all underwater (worth less than what was owed on their mortgage) because of the tech crash. The boom had been fun but everybody knew it was over and not coming back. After all, how many disk drives did the world really need anyway? The tech business magazines (upside, red herring, etc.) all had cover stories about how people were fleeing the valley

You’re right about the gold rush being over. But what certainly remains true is that, although your product may be failing, it could be possible to identify individual features or adjacent markets that are more promising.