Azeem Azhar

But what's really different is that back then,

nobody was really using these sites and these services outside of Yahoo and CNET and eBay.

these things were empty.

The line was from the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams, build it and they will come.

And people built it, built these things and nobody came.

I mean, pets.com spent $150 million to make $600,000 a month in sales.

I mean, it was really, really confused.

So I think that's where the similarity to some extent ends, which is that

what we are seeing with generative AI is that most of us are using chat GPT and many companies are, and there's billions of dollars being spent.

So that feels distinctly different to where we were back in 2000.

Well, I think Thinking Machines is a really great example.

And I felt my Spidey sense tingle as well.

It's really just a hard thing to piece together.

No business plan, no product and that kind of valuation.

But those things happen in...

you know, the private venture capital market from time to time, and they don't really spill over in the real world.

I mean, three years ago, venture capital fundraising, prices investors were willing to pay was really, really crazy.

That stopped.

Prices normalised.

They're getting expensive now.