Not a bubble. A small subset of tech companies are over-valued, yes. Most notorious are Facebook, Groupon, possibly Twitter, Zynga, etc. But most are not. And a

Not a bubble. A small subset of tech companies are over-valued, yes. Most notorious are Facebook, Groupon, possibly Twitter, Zynga, etc. But most are not. And a greater proportion of startups are 100% bootstrapped and then kept as lifestyle cash cows or flipped early in small private exits. Many companies have high caps but probably valued about right and they have real products and revenue streams, like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Oracle, Cisco, etc. I think that a couple factors are contributing. One, returns on safe investments like bank savings accounts are basically zero. Two, there's a lot of great free info on the web now for people to self-educate especially regarding entrepreneurship and angel investment, as well as more tools like AngelList and more social event series like Meetups and code jams and contests that help facilitate bring people together and leading to new enterprises and deals. Third, the top 10% wealth-wise have even more discretionary money now than they did in the 90's, and that combined with an increasing sense that the US salaryman has no guaranteed future anymore, so we we have to increasingly look to making FU/retirement from entrepreneurship and investments rather than doing the 9-to-5-til-yer-60 thing.