Ready for another Dot.Com bubble?

[Scuba]

A Billion-Dollar Club, and Not So Exclusive

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/05/technology/growing-numbers-of-start-ups-are-worth-a-billion-dollars.html?_r=0

But an unprecedented number of high technology start-ups, easily 25 and possibly exceeding 40, are valued at $1 billion or more. Many employees are quietly getting rich, or at least building a big cushion against a crash, as they sell shares to outside investors. Airbnb, Pinterest, SurveyMonkey and Spotify are among the better-known privately held companies that have reached $1 billion. But many more with less familiar names, including Box, Violin Memory and Zscaler, are selling services to other companies.

“A year from now that might be 100,” said Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a venture capital business. Sequoia counts a dozen such companies in its portfolio. It is part of what he calls “a permanent change” in the way people are building their companies and financers are pushing up values.

...

For every Dropbox, which offers online data storage primarily to consumers and is valued at $4 billion, there are two unheralded companies like Zscaler, a provider of online corporate data security, and Palantir, which does predictive data analysis, valued at more than $1 billion. Selling to big business is considered less risky than selling to consumers.

“There are disruptions everywhere,” said Robert Tinker, the chief executive of MobileIron, which makes software for companies to manage smartphones and tablets. “Mobile disrupts personal computers, a market worth billions. Cloud disrupts computer servers and data storage, billions of dollars more. Social may be one of those rare things that is totally new.”

[tridim]

1. Yes, I'd like to make 4 times what I make now, again.

I remember 1999 well, when it all came tumbling down.