The only technology that has consistently grown at an exponential rate of doubling each year is IC&#x2F;computing. It is utterly unreasonable to expect other sciences and technologies to exhibit similar growth. There doesn&#x27;t exist a Facebook for nanotech because nanotech doesn&#x27;t grow and scale like computational resources.<p>Now, if you consider nanotech as a new term for some or all of the traditional fields of materials science and pharmaceuticals, then it is bullshit to claim that the hype died out. The traditional materials science companies soldier on and continue to grow at very impressive rates (stocks returning an annual 10-30%): P&amp;G, Dow, Du Pont, 3M, etc.<p>The barrier for entry for startups is too high. Forget about building a manufacturing line, running a manufacturing line for a couple of days can cost in the order of millions of dollars. It is hardly a thing that one can do in one&#x27;s parents&#x27; basement or garage. That is how most materials science-y and pharma companies have all been in the business for 50-100 years or more. Naturally, the successful companies in this area will be rather few in number.