4 ms·
A permanent, secular rise in the maturity of the tech startup ecosystem (and of "software eating everything") would exhibit many of the same signs of high growt
by bfe 13y ago
A permanent, secular rise in the maturity of the tech startup ecosystem (and of "software eating everything") would exhibit many of the same signs of high growth, or the same collection of Verhulst growth curves in disparate indicators, as a bubble. Dev salaries, SoMa rents, and MBA hanger-on density are probably useless in distinguishing between the two.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoIn which case, we need some distinguishing factor, because you just argued for investing in a bubble ;-).
- sillysaurus2 13y agoInvesting in a bubble is a good thing, though. Without it we'd have no Paypal (and hence no Musk).
- bfe 13y agoIt's great for technology and society. It's not great for you when you invest your own or someone else's cash on the wrong side of the burst.
- bfe 13y agoSure. Growth in value, as measured in users plus at least one of profits or strategic value. I see Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, and Github and I do not see a bubble. Instagram and Tumblr are good examples of growth in strategic value being enough.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoI don't actually see the separate and distinct economic value creation in Instagram, Twitter, or Tumblr, nor do I see the economic value capture in Github. But Tesla and SpaceX are just fucking awesome.
- Aqueous 13y agoThe economic value of GitHub is in making team collaboration and communication, the primary bottleneck in team development, that much more efficient. That is hugely valuable, as it increases the economic productivity of companies writing software, and allows teams to organically form (and dissolve) without much organizational overhead. It is a huge improvement from the days before SCMs (let alone SCM-based project management cloud-software), and even a large improvement over the days of CVS, SubVersion, and SourceForge.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoWell of course, yeah, there's their value creation. What I don't see is how they capture some of that value as profits.