Winter is coming
Check out my counter-argument:<p>Why are startups hot now?  Not because the economy is good or because the startup ideas people are having are particularly good, but because risk seeking investors are trying to shove capital anywhere they can.<p>After the crash of 2008 lots of avenues (created by Wall Street post Financial Modernization Act) to invest this capital were closed, and the growth of the startup scene, particularly the NY startup scene, is a direct result of this. Couple this with a real negative interest rates and you have a nice long boom period where startups are the best thing going for investors who are getting free money (via negative interest rates) to gamble with.<p>Why will this continue?  Exactly the same reason why Yahoo is still in business and why Microsoft is still profitable.  There is <i>tremendous</i> room for innovation, growth, and all the improvements associated with those things.<p>Soon joe.sixpack@yahoo.com will wake up and start demanding more and more web innovation, and the void will be filled by startups doing clever, lucrative, disruptive things.  I personally can't believe that anyone can tolerate using Yahoo for anything... and I'm stunned that people tolerate 2 hour battery life Android phones, Windows Vista, etc. The problems (areas for improvement) are far deeper than most tech-savvy people (such as on HN) can imagine, and the population (thanks mostly to Facebook) is slowly waking up to what it actually wants to do online.<p>To borrow the OP's metaphor, we're in the very early dawn of a beautiful, early spring day, etc.  This will occur at least until the cost of borrowing increases substantially.<p>Also, anyone who thinks we have an information economy in 2011 will look back in a few decades and laugh.