For the better part of two years, the dot-com mania had been fueled by the This Time It’s Different™ mass faith that Americans had in the promise of the Internet. That sort of new-economy mumbo-jumbo worked for the dot-com companies—until it didn’t. Get Big Fast and profits-someday were valid business strategies—until they weren’t. The hundreds of new companies created in the dot-com era simply pushed credulity a bit too far, for a bit too long. The flood of crap companies, especially those that came to market near the end of the bubble,
