We saw it with the blockchain, whatever that was exactly, which attracted lots of investment a decade ago and yet has yet to yield any companies of significant size.
We saw a ton of money piling into fintech, and while there are some big companies starting to emerge, such as Monzo and Revolut, we have yet to see a major IPO or trade sale that would crystallise the value for the backers of all those businesses.
Lots of cash was sunk into new media startups such as Vice, valued at almost $6bn at its peak, most of which has since disappeared. The car dealer Cazoo was worth almost $8bn at its peak, but following its listing it is valued at just a fraction of that.
WeWork, the leader in shared office space, was valued at $47bn by Venture Capital (VC) firms who thought it had revolutionised the way people work, but ended up going bust. The list goes on and on.
Right now, money is being poured into a handful of artificial intelligence start-ups, but it is very hard to believe that frenzy will end any better than instant food delivery.
Sure, picking early-stage companies is hard. It is not easy to find the right entrepreneur with the right idea at the right time. Everyone understands that there will be plenty of failures, and one or two big winners will make it all worthwhile.
But instead there is a depressing pattern of group-think, of jumping on bandwagons, and over-hyping businesses that are never going to make any money.
The Government is planning for more and more pension fund money to be allowed to go to the VC houses. The Labour Party, if and when it takes power, plans to double down on that, and even thinks it can pick the winners itself, setting out the “strategic industries” of the future that will be prioritised for investment.
Yet failure after failure shows pension funds or mainstream investors should be limited in their exposure to risky and misguided VCs – the all-too-easy to predict implosion of the instant delivery industry has proved that all over again.
