It's very likely a bubble when suddenly huge portion of people you knew are leaving their jobs to do startups en mass. Lot of these people hardly have anything

It's very likely a bubble when suddenly huge portion of people you knew are leaving their jobs to do startups en mass. Lot of these people hardly have anything significant on table and still get funded anyway. This is very similar to mortgage crisis where large number of people who don't qualify can easily get mortgages anyway. Accelerators have mushroomed all over places doing dozens of meetups and networking events powered by "luminaries" that no one knows because they are literally now running out of even Class-C startup celebrities. I believe it is well know that economic condition have been very unique last few years in that there is lot of investor money in market trying to find its home. Even if returns on VC is subpar many investors wants to give it a try because returns elsewhere sucked anyway and also there is a chance of winning the lottery. As the stock market and real estate continues to gain momentum and confidence, money would start start migrating back. My prediction is that in next 5 years, investors are going to realize that it was a good try, VC returns sucks compared to S&P/real estate and they start pulling out. This will first cause shutdown of recently mushroomed accelerators/startup schools. That would then further spook VCs causing chain reaction eventually leading to meltdown. I think more prudent VCs such as Y and Sequoia would continue as usual but many other will simply shutdown because of lack of funds. This is not to contradict Sam's predictions. Lot of the companies in his list can go big and easily double the value but in 5 years that would have much less effect on how much investment money VCs aquire.