Here’s what people who weren’t there don’t know about the moment the dot-com bubble burst: there was no single moment.
The date was different for everyone, and the range varies a lot more than you think. So far as I was concerned, the dot-com economy crashed on the morning of January 11, 2000. That’s when I entered the Time-Life building, seething because the Time Warner CEO had just sold our company to AOL, of all internet hellholes, for $183 billion. Just keep your head down, I thought in the elevator, and maybe you won’t be asked to cover a deal that insanely overvalues a company you just called “training wheels for the internet.”
As I crept into the morning meeting, a voice boomed: “Chris! Let me introduce you to the men you’ll be covering this week,” said Time magazine editor Walter Isaacson, presenting AOL CEO Steve Case and Time Warner CEO Jerry Levin. Cue forced smiles and clammy handshakes all around.
The vibe shift of the dot-com bubble began in … January 2000?
The history of financial bubbles, from the South Sea original that suckered in Sir Isaac Newton to the AI implosion of 2024 where a lot of the smartest people in tech seem set to lose their shirts, can be summarized thus: it’s all about vibes, man.
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