I think there’s a lot of parallels to the internet bubble. If you look at the internet bubble, a lot of people think about the flops, like Pets.com and Webvan.
Through the lens of the past 30 years, though, we’ve now gotten most of the largest companies in the world, including Amazon and Google, two of the largest companies in the world.
But then you look at how much of Microsoft’s market cap is from Cloud and others, and you start to look and you say, “Actually, if you look at the GDP of the world, how much has actually been created or influenced by the existence of the internet?” One could argue that all the people in 1999 were kind of right. It was as impactful on pretty much every measure.
Even things like Webvan, there’s now, as the internet became more distributed, really healthy businesses like Instacart and DoorDash and others that were built now that the smartphone and the scale of the internet has matured. So even some of the specific ideas were actually not that bad, but maybe a little early.
But if you look at the internet, if you were an Amazon shareholder from its IPO to now, you’re looking pretty good. If you’re a Webvan shareholder, you might feel a little differently.
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