The inevitable bubble chatter will pick up steam again. There are many reasons to believe we're in a bubble and in our view, stronger reasons to believe we're not.<p>Here are several in support of a bubble.<p>1. There were 9x as many $100 million private financing rounds as there were $100 million public offerings. People are starting to call these private IPOs which is a bit of an oxymoron but the point around private market money being plentiful and even providing some liquidity to founders and early investors is happening even in some private transactions.<p>2. In the first 3.5 months of this year, there were 16 new companies that raised money at a billion dollar valuation or higher. There were 15 in all of 2013.<p>3. All sorts of new money is flowing into the market, i.e. private equity, hedge funds, mutual funds, corporations and sovereign wealth funds.<p>Why we are NOT in a bubble.<p>1. All of the US unicorns combined are worth less than Facebook<p>2. They collectively are worth 3.5% of the Nasdaq 100. Of course, notable tech companies like Twitter are also on NYSE so the % is overstated.<p>3. The public markets have not lost their mind. In fact, they're fairly hostile to new issuances which despite VC bellyaching is a good thing for VCs and in maintaing the current climate. When retail investors get burned on tech, the bubble will quickly pop. But right now, that's not the case as just calling yourself tech doesn't guarantee a high valuation. The market, while still far from perfect, treats companies with crappy or suspect fundamentals with skepticism (see Box).<p>4. There is no mechanism that will force a quick contraction. A bubble is typified by rapid expansion and contraction of asset values. The expansion part is happening for sure.<p>5. But there is not scorecard to provide the contraction. When companies are publicly traded, you have that daily scorecard to force it, but right now, it's private money going in and the beauty of the private markets is you can bury your dead very quietly. In essence, the opacity of the private markets enables investors to point to any failing investment or investor and just say "they were dumb money, we are different". And so there is no event that will pop it.<p>Notes:<p>A. I'm the CEO of CB Insights. We track private company financings and exits.<p>B. A crazy exogenous factor like a disease pandemic, terrorism, a China meltdown, war, etc are not considered in the above. If I could predict those with any certainty, I'd be doing that.<p>C. I gave a presentation at the Quebec Venture Capital and Private Equity conference this past week on this topic "Bubbles, Unicorn and Our Crazy Private Markets". It may be of interest if you're interested in the data behind some of the above bullets.<p><a href="https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/tech-bubble-unicorns.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbinsights.com/reports/tech-bubble-unicorns.pdf</a>