One of the prototypical speculative bubbles of all time was the 17th Century tulip mania in the Netherlands. In fact, tulip mania is now used metaphorically to refer to any economic bubble. Did the Europeans learn from tulip mania? Not really: the South Sea Bubble expanded and popped in early 18th Century England; no less brilliant a personage than Sir Isaac Newton lost his shirt in that one. As a battle-scarred As a battle-scarred veteran of the dot-com boom of the late 1990’s and the dot-com bust of the early 2000’s, I’ve got to say that I’m starting to smell tulips again. My 1999 startup, PC Pitstop, is still going, but it was touch and go there for about a year, especially in the fall of 2001 after the World Trade Center attacks.It’s not just that Silicon Valley is once again awash in venture capital and startups. It’s that there’s so much money floating around for silly things.I’m not talking about Google buying YouTube: that actually made some sense to me. I’m talking more about this story from the Boston Globe, about “Ever-younger entrepreneurs”. Does it make sense to you that a 9th-grader would start a Web design company by outsourcing to India? OK, that one’s still barely credible. What about another 9th-grader who sold a Facebook program to a Silicon Valley venture capitalist? Hmmm.I’ll have more to say about Facebook and Facebook applications in another post. Meanwhile, sniff the air yourself: Are those tulips? Software Development