Is there a bubble in the technology industry? YC boss furious opening invitation to bet

Lead: US business incubator Y Combinator Sham Atman, Sam Altman, today posted a gamble on the dotcom bubble, predicting that the company's valuations will rise sharply over the next 5 years and even openly invite VCs to bet on him.

The following is the full text of the article:

I'm fed up with the hype about the tech industry bubble by investors and journalists. I understand it's interesting and eye-catching, but I've seen enough of this kind of article. I also understand that this may scare off some new investors and may lower corporate valuations, but there must be a better way to win.

Compared with the market situation, I am more concerned about the specific behavior of enterprises. Investors and pundits ' expectations of market revisions have no meaning in improving the status quo.

If the investor thinks the enterprise is overvalued, can not participate completely, the market will eventually find the right price.

I have always been wary of bubbles, but the situation is still very reasonable (although some early valuations are unreasonable, the moves made by a handful of capital are still not enough to call it "bubbles".) Even some of my own recent comments have been wrongly interpreted as bubbles-enough to see how much the media is happy with this argument.

While this creates a lot of desperation, the business cycle is a lot shorter than the wave of innovation. In the October 2008, Sequoia Capital--which counted as the best venture capital company--made its famous "rest, good times" speech (where I was). A few months later, we funded the Airbnb. A few months later, a company called Ubercab was founded.

I am not only talk about the people, the following is the outlook for the next 5 years, I gave 3 of the imagination, which opened a game.

1. The 6 largest American companies in Http://fortune.com/2015/01/22/the-age-of-unicorns this article (Uber, Palantir, Airbnb, Dropbox, Pinterest and SpaceX The current total valuation is just over 100 billion dollars. I removed the Snapchat because I could not understand its valuation. Imagination 1: January 1, 2020, the total valuations of these companies can reach at least 200 billion dollars.

2, stripe, Zenefits, Instacart, Mixpanel, teespring, Optimizely, Coinbase, Docker and weebly are the companies that hatch from Y Combinator and are now in the middle of development, The total value is less than 9 billion dollars. Imagination 2: January 1, 2020, the total value of these companies will be at least 27 billion dollars.

3, Imagination 3: The current batch of YC Winter 2015 companies are basically not valued, but by January 1, 2020 the total valuation will reach at least 3 billion dollars.

From now on to the imagination Day any acquired enterprises are calculated according to the purchase price. The valuation of private companies is based on the latest round of financing (up to 1 time times the liquidation priority) or on the latest at least 100 million dollars in the two-tier market. Listed companies are calculated by market capitalisation.

Valuations must face downward pressure as interest rates rise. But I think the upward pressure on innovation and profitability is greater.

Of course, the collapse of the macro market in 2018 or 2019 may be difficult to recover by 2020. I think this is the most likely reason for me to lose the game.

Any venture capitalist can bet me that the first participant is my opponent (though I'm not sure if those who are on my opposite side really should be investing in startups). The bet is: the loser donates 100,000 dollars to a charitable organization selected by the winner. (PEI)