What Is Old Is New Again – By Gergely Orosz

> Smartphones ... were the catalyst for mobile-first tech companies, like Spotify (founded 2006,) WhatsApp (2009,) Instagram (2010,) Uber (2010,) Snap (2011,)...

> The smartphone and cloud revolutions coincided almost perfectly with when interest rates fell to zero and then stayed in the deep freeze for a decade

> These developments gave VCs even more reason to invest in startups

> - New categories of mobile-first startups were around, with potential

Free money (ZIRP) fuelled investments, sure, yes, of course.

An interesting idea here is that the free money was sent into certain directions because certain foundational tech was already there: cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) and mobile devices (iPhone, Android).

Even if money weren't free at the time, maybe the available money would've been sent to those (types of) startups anyway? Maybe tech history would've been the same, only slower?

It is kind of surprising to me that someone didn't connect the historically low interest rates in the last 15 years with our unicorn party. This and the massive liquidity injections.