You hit on a major question: how many startup-startups are there? (a.k.a. economic incest) Things like Product Hunt, Clerky, etc. obviously qualify, but what a

You hit on a major question: how many startup-startups are there? (a.k.a. economic incest) Things like Product Hunt, Clerky, etc. obviously qualify, but what about Stripe? They started that way but have diversified quite a bit into more stable and traditional businesses. Lots of startup-startups: hard landing Not very many: soft landing / minor correction Economic incest via marketing was a major cause of the 2000-2001 dot.com crash. Many dot.coms had revenue based on selling ads to other dot.coms, so when then bottom started to fall out there was a massive cascade effect. Of course the other major cause of 2000-2001 was that it was a leveraged public market bubble. Public markets are notoriously panicky and leverage multiplies movements. 2012-2016 is neither leveraged nor public. It's private cash investors mostly. Movements will be slower and less violent due to lack of leverage amplification.