Live from MWC in Barcelona: are we in a tech bubble?

I was interviewed by Seema Mody at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. As the Nasdaq reached 5,000 pts that day, the focus of the discussion was not on mobile trends but on valuation and whether or not we are in a bubble. In a nutshell, my argument was that on the public side, the valuation of high growth tech companies do not seem very inflated at this point. For example, if you look at SaaS comps, the average FWD revenue multiple is around 5.4x for a growth rate of 25%. This is very similar of where these comps were in 2006 when I started in venture. On the private side though, things are different and I am seeing a large increase in both the round size and valuation. So is it a bubble? I would say that the private market environment is definitely very inflated. However, in my view, the qualities of the companies and the globalization of the market makes the situation different from 2000.