I used to think there was going to be a crash, but not anymore. We have just experienced a controlled deflation, probably the first time at least in my lifetime. Most/many tech companies got deflated but somehow we avoided a massive crash this time and sensibilities have increased without mass chaos.
Word of Caution: The Dot-Com & Real Estate bubbles happened slowly and then all at once. When a bubble slows down, everyone says we're just going through a correction. The possibility of a complete crash is still there in the next year or so. Especially, since a mega-hit ($10b+ val) hasn't been created in SV in over 5 years. Investors need these mega-hits in order to justify the risks they take and there hasn't been a break-out started since 2010.
It was actually expectable. I read Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker back when we were living the first bubble, and it is amazing how much the dot-com bubble followed previous technology disruption bubbles.
The book seriously predates the dot-com bubble. It does not mention it. It's just that it perfectly fitted the events back then, and still does; something that is a hallmark of quality.
According to Drucker, a first boom and crash is followed by a more shallow boom and slowdown, and then the tech is absorbed into everyday life and causes no more large market fluctuations.
Let's put things into perspective. The VC market raised 28 billion dollars last year [1]. Apple's market cap alone often goes up and down by this much on any given month (or even day, occasionally). While this small segment of the financial system gets a lot of press (especially on HN), this is a tiny amount in terms of the overall capital markets. My guess is that if the same kind of bubble were present in the stock or fixed income markets--which are both many many times larger than the VC investment market--there would be much more hysteria.
