Cade Metz

As those startups were being built, there were other companies that were building the infrastructure needed to drive the internet, that were spending enormous amounts of money to lay the fiber optic cable that would carry all that information across the internet to our machines.

When the bubble burst, a lot of those companies went bankrupt.

And that's often what people are thinking about as they look back at the dot-com bubble.

Just like then, you have companies spending enormous amounts of money on the infrastructure needed to drive on this.

The difference is they are spending a lot more today than they did 25 years ago.

This is a great point.

So many of the applications that were promised by all those startups that went out of business are part of our daily lives today.

Amazon delivers our pet food.

Other companies deliver our real-time products.

Internet video, so many of the things that were promised in we have today.

And we're actually using that fiber optic cable that was laid and that sat there dormant for many years.

And we are now reaping the benefits.

It's just that it didn't happen as quickly as a lot of people thought.

So many people I talk to say that very thing.

They point out that in the end, despite the bubble bursting, eventually everything turned out as promised.

They make that analogy, and that's why they're making these enormous bets today.

They acknowledge there might be losers, as Sam Altman did during that dinner, but they think it's going to work out in the end.

The concern, however, among some in the Valley and some in New York where the financial analysts are, is that the risk being taken on by some companies is far larger than in the past.

And if that's the case and the bubble bursts again, the fallout could be far more significant.

Well, as I discuss this with all sorts of people, including technologists, but also financial analysts, the other thing that often comes up is the housing bubble of the late 2000s, which was a much more serious thing.