Time was, I thought about this stuff all the time. I mean Silicon Valley and the venture capitalists who invested in its startups, and the financial analysts who promoted the companies its investment banks took public. I thought about it because from 1996 to 2002 I was the editor of Red Herring magazine, sometimes called the "bible of the boom." It was an entire world, one that today seems to me as antediluvian as Noah's seaside villa.

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