You probably thought my Instagram post would be about the evils of Facebook, but instead I wrote a post with Jennifer Leggio on Forbes about how to survive a tech bubble. No matter what impact the Instagram deal has on my personal social media (and even on the fledgling network), what is becoming clear is a return to dangerous financial valuations for venture-backed tech start-ups.
Paying $1 billion dollars for a 12-person company with zero in-bound revenue makes absolutely no sense. Even worse, the acquirer Facebook is a company that expects a $100 billion IPO on $1 billion a year of net revenue. It’s clear we are in the midst of another tech bubble. That’s why Jenn and I wrote our somewhat cheeky survival guide.
During the .com era, I was in the middle of the boom as a mid-level manager. I remember getting laid off with the rest of the marketing staff at IPNet Solutions in 1999 (I served as media relations manager), just three weeks before our shares vested. The catch? It was done on my cell phone in two minutes flat while I was on vacation. Nice. Four years later, IPNet was acquired for an undisclosed amount (e.g. a mercy kill).
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