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Comment by swang | Hacker News Reader

2010: Sorry, But This "Tech Bubble 2.0" Talk Is Ridiculous http://www.businessinsider.com/one-big-reason-were-not-in-te...

2011: 11 Crazy Signs This Really Is A Tech "Bubble" http://www.businessinsider.com/signs-of-tech-bubble-2011-8

2012: A Non-Tech Person's Guide To The Tech Bubble—And Why There ISN'T A Tech Bubble http://www.businessinsider.com/why-there-is-no-tech-bubble-2...

2013: Here's The Evidence That The Tech Sector Is In A Massive Bubble http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-that-tech-sector-is-...

2014: Here's The Evidence That The Tech Bubble Is About To Burst http://www.businessinsider.com/evidence-that-tech-bubble-is-...

Have we reached peak, "Tech Bubble" talk yet?

PS. those last 2 articles were written by the same person basically regurgitating the same talking points, but just 1 year later.

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All the URLs come from Business Insider. That's kind of like John Stewart's point how the News Media says year after year that this is the worst Allergy Season ever. Its the worst allergy season every year no matter what because pollen count increases every year no matter what.

Why do pollen counts increase every year? Global temperatures don't rise every year.

If the rising pollen counts are part of a process that is driven by the overall global temperature trend but which is relatively insensitive to annual variation around that trend, such that the output is smoothed compared to the input, that would produce the pollen counts rising every year with a rising global temperature trend, even if global temperatures don't rise every year.

One particular reason this might be the case is if the process driving the increased pollen count is a reaction to global temperature (or some other more direct product of global temperature) that moves to slowly compared to the average rate of global temperature change to ever reach an equilibrium point with the current global temperature, so that its always trailing well below what it would be at the current global temperature if that temperature were a long-term sustained average.

Could you ELI5?

> ... because pollen count increases every year no matter what.

Is this actually true?

2009: OK you're right, this is a bubble http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/pmarcaarchive/ok-youre-right...

We are definitely in a bubble.

The question is whether, when and how bad it will burst.

Predicting market events like bursts is extremely hard, even for experts - so hard you can make a lot of money from it - remember that economists too said that the housing market was a bubble and wrote posts to mock how, for four years people kept repeating the claims.

If billion dollar valuations for buttons that text 'Yo' isn't a speculation bubble on the one area of US industrial growth, an area that gets a lot of cash influx to keep it going (much of it taxpayer), I don't know what we could call a bubble.

Not all bubbles burst. But how much confidence do you have that the market will remain the way it is today after another series of Snowden revelations, a housing crises (or water crisis) in the Valley, the release of financial information that makes people lose faith, a shocking event like Alibaba beating out Amazon or something, etc?

If you think something like that could seriously damage the industry then you have to admit that the demand for the good and services is highly elastic - or at least fragile.

Fragility of a market + overvaluation and overspeculation implies a bubble.

Can you provide an example of a startup that you think is overvalued?

> that you think is overvalued?

That's the problem. Valuations are dreams and "best case scenario" right now because we haven't had an IPO to lock in valuation for a long time.

It'll take a single IPO flop to start the bubble bursting domino run just like v1.

The real question then is: Can IPOs be succesfully propped to prevent every possible flop? because it'll take just one bad egg to bring down the house.

> It'll take a single IPO flop to start the bubble bursting domino run just like v1.

How about Etsy? Their IPO was a pretty big flop and there has been no domino run.

Etsy shares doubled from $15 to $30 quickly before sinking. Investors still got their ROI on the prop, so I'd call that a success in valley eyes.

> Investors still got their ROI on the prop

Was there no lock-up[1] period?

1. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/ipolockup.asp

usually the vcs' lock up period ends at ipo

anyway, I don't think etsy is a good example - guess who followed the same pattern (of jumping really high on the 1st day and sinking a few months after IPOing) and is now worth 2x the peak ipo price? https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AFB&ei=tNp7VbG5O9TA...

Ummm... Uber, mentioned right in the article?

Do you really believe they're worth more than the entire Taxi industry? More than multinational conglogmerates like Kraft?

41B is an utterly absurd valuation for that company, and anyone sane knows it.

> Do you really believe they're worth more than the entire Taxi industry?

Uber is in 58 countries, and is expanding to more countries. Are you saying the combined value of the taxi industry in those countries is less than 50 billion?

I'm saying Uber is currently but a fraction of the value of the taxi industry it's trying to displace.

You may not realize this, particularly if you don't travel outside the US very much, but Uber's success outside the US is far more restricted than it is in the US (and even within the US it's variable). They're likely to encounter more and more regulatory resistance (good luck getting an UberPop in Belgium, for example), which will significantly curtail growth.

On top of that, the brutal reality is that Uber could be easily replaced, either by an individual international competitor or competitors within individual markets who can better navigate the local regulatory environment. After all, look at how products like Line seem to have sprung out of nowhere to challenge the Facebooks and so forth of the world. And I guarantee you, the taxi industry will adjust while holding the advantage of being an incumbent monopoly. Uber could be displaced overnight given the right conditions.

So, no, I'm entirely unimpressed by that "58 countries" claim and believe Uber is significantly overvalued at this time.

Uber isn't just trying to replace the taxi industry. They're aiming much higher than that.

They're aiming to replace all driving of all sorts. Personal. Logistics. Everything involving road-based vehicles.

They may not succeed, and I do think they're valued too highly.

But based on the risk factors in their plan, not based on the scale of one small market segment they're aiming for.

Seems pretty standard. Economists are usually very good at predicting 11 out of 4 recessions/bubbles ending/whatever.

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