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by throwaway316943 1874 days ago
That doesn’t line up with what I’ve read about that time period. A lot of the companies that were well funded by such bets went bankrupt. In all likelihood you would have lost money during the bust. The companies that weathered the storm were actually delivering good products and had cash flow. That takes a lot of work on the tech and business sides.

Maybe you could have timed the bubble and exited with a pile of cash, who knows. If you want to make those kinds of bets you could make them right now.
2 comments
ghaff 1874 days ago
The far more common scenario in the dot-bomb era was that you lost your job (which almost certainly wasn't paying the kind of salary many developers expect today), were left with a pile of worthless stock options, and maybe spent a couple years asking people if they'd like fries with that. (That's only a slight exaggeration. I was very very lucky to almost immediately land another position--which then went through its own rough times but not to the point of being unemployed.)

Some people made out of course, but in general ~2001-2004 was not a great time to be in tech.

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papito 1874 days ago
For this specifically, Musk was so immature and inexperienced that he was either kept away or removed from higher posts, but since the ideas themselves materialized and were successful (see Zip2. X dot com), he walked away with millions. He was the definition of failing upwards. And once you have 200 bars of walkaway money, it's really, really hard to fail.

Per Wikipedia: "Within the merged company [PayPal], Musk returned as CEO. Musk's preference for Microsoft software over Linux created a rift in the company and caused Thiel to resign. Due to resulting technological issues and lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000."

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