Silicon Valley Is Not In A 1999 Time Warp

Thereâ??s a time warp along the stretch of Highway 101 that runs between San Jose and Marin County in Northern California. To many there, it looks like 1999 all over again. While the rest of the country is landscaped with foreclosed homes and empty big-box stores, San Francisco and Silicon Valley have a shortage of office space. Established tech companies like Google are offering seven-figure bonuses to retain talented engineers, while the Sand Hill Road offices of venture capitalists are full of optimistic twentysomethings looking for fundingâ??and many of them are getting more than they need. In the most infamous example, a startup called Color received $41 million before it even released its first product, a cryptic photo-sharing app for the iPhone that puzzled reviewers and users alike. The company has since â??pivotedâ? (thatâ??s startup talk for taking a mulligan). The New York Times, for its part, has published scores of articles suggesting that another tech bubble is imminent. So is it time to brace ourselves for the worst? The answer is no (or, at least, not yet), and thatâ??s because there are some major differences between the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s and whatâ??s happening now.