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2021 was the apotheosis of 2011. I'm sure hundreds of examples on this site chronicle how wild and not quite calm nor collected it was, but I liked No Exit by Gideon Lewis-Kraus. (The original WIRED article is paywalled, so here's a specific sub-thread started by tptacek from its discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7644161)

Whatever you want to say the current market is, it's nothing like the early 2010s.

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The current market absolutely is much more like 2011 than 2021. If you were working in tech back then, it was easy to raise money for specific types of startup (social was the thing back then like AI is today) but it was nothing like 2021. You could raise money for a ham sandwich in 2021.

The ZIRPmania of 2021 was certainly dependent upon what came before it but it wasn’t a natural outcome, it needed the economic chaos of the pandemic, it would not have happened without the pandemic.

No Exit, written in 2014, recounts that infamous time a team (trio?) of founders were funded before they had a business idea.

That's been YC's modus operandi since long before 2014. Reddit, from the first YC batch, came about because Paul said (paraphrasing) "I like you kids but your idea sucks, forget about it and you can join YC". Nothing to do with ZIRP.

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