[telson]

What you say is true, and I may generalise more than I should, however I don't think you need a phd in astrophysics to see that this is a bubble. Or that's what I think it is, will see, I hope I'm wrong because many of my friends depend on the start-up ecosystem.

[mattmanser]

Yeah, but you're too young to understand the first one. I only caught whiffs of the tail end of it. Read some of the stories, some of the stuff they were trying to do was nuts.

The massive difference in this one is there really is a load of money to be made. Everyone is now online all the time. Back in 1999 there were bugger all people online and you wouldn't put your credit card details in for love nor money. Business wouldn't buy critical tools online. A lot of the industrial tools are moving cloud based rather than the old server install method. It's expensive to have your own IT team for a couple of massively overpowered servers that still seem to go down every day.

And a lot of consumer faced products are making massive sums just because of the sheer scale of the marketplace now. Google is profitable and there really was a time when it wasn't, Facebook is profitable. Match.com, craigs list. You've got businesses like netflix and spotify. People buy digital goods online. There's a lot more opportunity out there.

Some industries have gone crazy in that they're not charging, the one I look at and shake my head at is the diet industry, what on earth brilliant tools like myfitnesspal and their ilk are doing I do not know, that seems like a sad race to the bottom in an industry traditionally worth hundreds of millions, if not billions. And others, like the newspapers, seem to be regaining their senses and are now charging (personal opinion, let's not derail the point :).

Your field, big data really is meaningful and it really is worth a lot of money to the right people. You'll usually get opportunities in the right startup to advance your learning far beyond what you'll ever achieve at most big companies.

There are exceptions to every rule, but big business often gets bogged down by conservatism and politics.

But in the end, do what makes you happy and find the culture that does. And there are plenty of great jobs out there with a CV like yours.

I partially agree there is a bubble, but only in certain startup sectors.

[telson]

I don't think that we disagree. I'm not talking about the valuation of the well established companies like spotify, netflix, match.com or even instagram and evernote which I use as examples in the post. These are not the problem, like Amazon was not in the dot-com bubble. I'm talking about the numerous "1 website - 1 app" paradigms that seem to proliferate based on VC backing with ridiculous amounts of money. And from my (very short) experience I've seen how that works and defines the start-ups objectives.

The companies I admire most now, used to be start-ups, however the term tends (for me at least) to get synonymous with something that's easy, temporary and quick money.

Maybe I should write another post talking about the good parts of working in start-ups. The parts that attracted me in the first place. So I can balance my opinion and not generalise so much.

I'll get some corporate experience soon (hopefully) and then I'll be in position to make a small comparison from a totally subjective point of view. After all, who knows, I may miss the start-up environment :)

[ironchef]

I would suggest you read ben horowitz's thoughts on the subject. He was in a startup during Bubble I (Loudcloud) and is now a VC during the current market: http://bhorowitz.com/2011/03/24/bubble-trouble-i-don%E2%80%9...

That being said...I think there is a proliferation of crap ideas and crap "companies"; however, I think there are some other really interesting startups attacking some big and interesting problems.