Recent double and triple digit billion dollar valuations of web companies have brought to attention fears of a new tech bubble. While some seem to be unfazed by these figures, others have been alarmed by the large amounts of funds flowing into the tech scene, speculating on a bubble lurking in the private market.

In an interview published on the New York Times, American entrepreneur, investor and software engineer Marc Andreessen went to great length to dismiss the talks of a new tech bubble, stating that “if you compare how big industrial companies (…) are valued, (…) tech stocks have never been valued more poorly.” In his opinion, this is the result of investors’ reluctance to invest adequately in the tech sector, “being unbelievably psychologically scarred from 10 years ago.”

However an article published in May on The Economist highlighted a more conservative view. While the article did acknowledge some of the arguments against the bubble bursting, namely the fact that unlike the time when pets.com was around, the sheer difference in the amount of Internet users, from few plugged in to 2 billion netizens, has made revenues abundant for web startups; it also pointed out another major difference: unlike the first tech bubble, the exuberance of traditional venture capitalists, private equity funds, and bank-led funds has been pouring into the private market.

The article warns “that the bubble forming in the private market could be pretty big by the time it floats into the public one”. The real threat however wouldn’t be from Facebook or Linkedin, as these exhibit fairly solid revenue plans, but from the copycats: “the Facebook and Linkedin wannabes, with prices that have been dangerously inflated by the angles’ antics.”