this post was submitted on 02 May 2026
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The late 90s .com bubble was very eye opening for me.
Top 1% (and up) wealthy people I have known often think in terms of "getting to the next level" - and no matter where you are, there's always a next level. Even the wealthiest people in the world aren't the most powerful in various circles, the most popular, the most well liked, the most beautiful... there's always that next unattainable step to vie for.
When there's a chaotic upheval, like .com, or AI, that's opportunity to reposition - and as many of these people are older, YOLO - they'll put significant capital at risk to try - especially those wealthy enough to make siginificant plays with less than 10% or less than 1% of their current net worth...
During .com, starting programmers' salaries doubled within less than a year - pretty much directly as a result of this opening of the powerful people's wealth hoardes putting them in competition with each other to hire everyone they could who could help them try to capitalize "on that .com stuff."
We were "seeking investment" before .com hit, after it hit investment was seeking us: satellite calls with guys from their yachts in the South Pacific... wild times.
Once you hit the 0.01% most wealthy, it's beyond "villainous eagerness and stupidity of greedy, rich fucks." it's more of a free-for-all among those players for how they might get to the next level, or be passed by by others who climb while they stagnate. 0.001% of 8 billion, or even 350 million, is still a LOT of people.