Bubble Growth
Venture capitalists saw record-setting growth as dot-com companies experienced meteoric rises in their stock prices and therefore moved faster and with less caution than usual, choosing to mitigate the risk by starting many contenders and letting the market decide which would succeed. The low interest rates in 1998–99 helped increase the start-up capital amounts. A canonical "dot-com" company's business model relied on harnessing network effects by operating at a sustained net loss to build market share (or mind share). These companies offered their services or end product for free with the expectation that they could build enough brand awareness to charge profitable rates for their services later. The motto "get big fast" reflected this strategy.
During the loss period the companies relied on venture capital and especially initial public offerings of stock to pay their expenses while having no source of income at all. The novelty of these stocks, combined with the difficulty of valuing the companies, sent many stocks to dizzying heights and made the initial controllers of the company wildly rich on paper. This combined with a period of relative wealth, with many "ordinary" people with spare cash investing and day-trading, which caused a lot of money to chase the available investment opportunities.
Read more about this topic: Dot-com Bubble
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—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
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