Overvalued in Silicon Valley, but Don’t Say ‘Tech Bubble’
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Today, people see shades of 2000 in the eye-popping valuations of companies like Slack, whose offices are seen at top; Uber; and Airbnb, at bottom.CreditFrom top: Jason Henry for The New York Times; Sam Hodgson for The New York Times; and Matthew Millman for The New York Times
SAN FRANCISCO — It is a wild time in Silicon Valley. Two-year-old companies are valued in the billions, ramshackle homes are worth millions and hubris has reached the point where otherwise sane businesspeople muse about seceding from the United States.
But the tech industry’s venture capitalists — the financiers who bet on companies when they are little more than an idea — are going out of their way to avoid the one word that could describe what is happening around them.
Bubble.
“I guess it is a scary word because in some sense no one wants it to stop,” said Tomasz Tunguz, a partner at Redpoint Ventures. “And so if you utter it, do you pop it?”…
Overvalued in Silicon Valley, but Don’t Say ‘Tech Bubble’
