dot.com bubble 2.0 - and away we go
$41 million. From Sequoia Capital, Bain Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. Pre-launch.Sound familiar? Actually, this deal has some serious potential. And anybody who bet big on Google can't be completely crazy. But this next big thing in social media has no members and everyone now knows what they're up to.That’s how much a brand new startup called Color has to work with. Your eyebrows should already be raised, and here’s something to keep them fixed there: this is the most money Sequoia has ever invested in a pre-launch startup. Or, as the Color team put it, “That’s more than they gave Google.”
Techcrunch.com, Mar 23, 2011
What this feels like - not this event per se but this event in the accumulation of other related events - is the dot.com boom again, but with social media and web 2.0 plastered all over it.
Most people think that the dot.com bust which inevitably followed the collapse of so much hot air had something to do with technology. It didn't. It was financial. Much of the technology developed and companies started during the original dot.com bubble are doing just fine, thank you very much. You've probably heard of Google or Amazon?
But ask any university that rues the loss of computer science students to parental misunderstanding. pitches computer science and you'll hear the lament of fewer students due to parental misunderstanding, parents who thought the problem was the lack of opportunity in information technology when it was about unsustainable businesses blowing up.
The pot is boiling again - with the rise of Twitter and Facebook and social networking and online video which, among other things, is attracting marketing dollars away from other media. And any time there's blood - or money - in the water, the sharks come out.
