Want to spot the next bubble? Look at where Harvard grads work.

"i'd think the bubble blown will be smaller due to VCs and Angels having learnt their lessons over the past decades"

A lot of bubbles get really bad when things get so frothy that people without sufficient background jump in. E.g. the 1929 stock market crash and junk bonds in the '80s ... although there was also government action involved in both of those.

One threat that is getting bigger in the Bay Area, is the ever increased concentration and dependence on start ups. Most of whom are not living of anything remotely resembling cash flow.

The tech eco system itself is one thing, and largely populated by people who can afford a bit of a hit. But nowadays, everything is priced and organized around ever more millionaires being minted in tech every day, and the spending these generate. Take even some of that away, say by making money less artificially cheap, and there is potential for plenty of pain and dislocation across the area.

Much like Finance in NYC, the tech boom/bubble is driving costs so high in the Bay Area, that the only remaining jobs are either in tech, or jobs providing highly paid, localized and personalized services to tech workers able to afford paying thousands to have their toenails clipped, lips kissed and walls decorated with Van Goghs. Leaving those providing the latter, highly vulnerable to any slowdown in the increasingly monocultural spigot from which almost all funds here now flow.

I think unqualified it means business/management consulting firms like McKinsey and so on.

Consulting is basically getting someone to figure out how to do something for you.

CEOs like consulting (primarily big name) because if it fails, they can say they got the best.

If the shareholders are willing to take the risk of the company they own acquiring other companies (don't acquisitions require board and/or shareholder approval?) then who is to say what that money "should" do?

I was not commenting on whether or not it is wise to spend billions to acquire company A or B or C. That is a separate question from the question of whether that behavior indicates a bubble. And like I said previously, it depends where the money comes from. If it is mostly debt, then it probably is a bubble. But if it is mostly Google's, Facebook's, etc insane profits, then it probably does not indicate a bubble.