THE IRRITATED AMERICAN AA tech investor experiences the rough end of an aggressive financial strategy in the year 2000 (Getty Images) 2014 was clearly a year for the books--very heavy, cash-filled books. At least when it came to tech IPO's and venture capital injections. Investors, high on pipe-hits of what may well turn out to be pure, uncut Overvaluation, seemed to care little for the lessons of the year 2000 and the disastrous crash of Web 1.0, and sunk incredible amounts of money into companies such as AliBaba and Uber. They didn't just pay any ol' prices; they paid Facebook-level prices to get in on the action with still blossoming companies. I remember the year 2000 very well. Back then I helped to launch dot-coms via online sales, marketing, and audience growth. I recall reading an online report that hit my inbox every week called the Venture Wire. The injections being blasted into companies with little more than the promise of the future implementation of a current idea (with little more on-hand than a mere splash page with a logo, and flashing the phrase "Under Construction") were simply mind-bending. Venture capitalists rolled some very expensive dice, not on functioning companies, but to "get in on the ground floor" on what they hoped would turn out to be a success somewhere on down the line. They merely voted with lots of dollars for the future success of a presently embryonic web idea. The times taught them very quickly--hard lessons learned even by those sites that were functional via branding and even e-commerce--that the world wasn't ready to treat the web as anything other than a place to chat (typically on AOL back then) and noodle around in the new digital ether. The experience simply wasn't smooth or secure enough--or familiar enough--for folks to spend the kind of money needed to pull in a decent ROI versus the staggering sums invested. We are of course in different times nowadays. But with the incredibly heliumized valuations seen in some of the deals flying hither and yon at the moment ($250 billion in IPO's in 2014) one can't help but feel faint echoes of the year 2000 drifting eerily through the atmosphere. We shall see. Preston Clive 1/8/2015***