JOBS Act Jitters
In one of my first Betabeat columns, I wrote about my concerns that the tech bubble has been only tempered by the larger economy. Once that economy rebounds, the unbridled enthusiasm in the tech sector will take off and the bubble will enter into the danger zone.
Even earlier–one year ago next week–I wrote my most popular blog post of all time. It was entitled “on the bubble.” I wrote it on my Tumblr. It was hella popular. Really. I wrote it one Saturday afternoon, in an almost stream of consciousness rant. I woke up, had some soup, and grabbed a Diet Coke and started writing. You can tell, when you read it (and do!) that it sort of hangs together, but that I come across new ideas as I’m writing it.
The basic premise of the piece, if you don’t feel like reading all 2,000 words of it, is that we are in the early stages of a tech bubble, and that most of these companies are funded by advertising, and advertisers don’t spend enough money, worldwide, to turn more than a few of these startups into “the next Google” or “the next Facebook,” even if all the ad money in the world went online. I still believe that. And I still believe that we’re in a bubble.
Finally, in the follow up discussions around my bubble post, I made this observation:
“We’re already hearing rumblings from the tech industry about how SOX [Sarbanes-Oxley --ed.] is burdensome, and SOX needs to be reworked, and SOX is interfering in the tech industry’s innovation. But it is not. SOX is going to be doing its job in this bubble. And if you want to actually look to see when this bubble’s gone to far, I would actually say that one of the easiest ways to measure how close we are to bubble busting, is to watch the chatter around SOX or, god forbid, action that lessens it. We’re at the end, then.”
Well, well, well. Little did I know it would come this soon. Read More
