12 Companies That Prove We're In A Tech Bubble

With more VC money than you can shake a steak at flooding the digital realm, a whole consortium of superfluous tech companies have sprouted up as a result. Allow me to present the case for why Techlandia is in a bubble.

1. Yo

independent.co.uk / Via Yo

The app so befuddling it launched a thousand think pieces. The tagline sure ain't lying, you tap a button and it sends a "yo" to a friend who receives a notification that he's received a "yo". Its $10 million valuation isn't just a case for the tech bubble but also a case against capitalism in general.

2. Parking Apps

insidemobileapps.com / Via Monkey Parking

Parking has become the latest in our slouch towards the inevitable dystopian future where everything and anything is done via apps. Drivers sure as hell don't need another reason to look at their phones, which in turn presents an added danger to people who don't use the app. Pango lets you pay for street or garage parking because apparently paying an attendant or meter is such a burdensome process. Monkey Parking lets you auction off street parking spots to your fellow drivers, even though you can't auction off something you don't. Hopefully other cities will follow San Francisco and ban the app.

3. Whistle

c.fastcompany.net

13 years after 2001: Space Odyssey takes place, we are beckoning at the door of a futurist's dream: Whistle, the fitbit for dogs. I can't wait to show my dog Bark Zuckerberg how the power of big data will get him that six pack he's always wanted.

4. MakeSpace

blogogist.com / Via MakeSpace

One of the hallmarks of our digital era is the transition from the tangible to the intangible. Postal service to email, DVDs to streaming, etc.... Naturally, the next act in this revolution is a company known as "Dropbox but IRL."

So it's a storage company? Yeah but it's different. How so? It just is, okay.

5. The Melt

laughingsquid.com

This next one is just so SMH, I can't bring myself to cover it in snark sauce. It's a grilled cheese joint, that is correct. Chew on that and then digest it. It's been reported that Silicon Valley has invested over $10 million in this fast food restaurant.

If the food possessed was edible, The Melt probably wouldn't be on this list. Their sandwiches are sheets of emasculated bread mushed together with lab-grown cheese stuck in between. The only redeeming quality of The Melt is that they sell PBR.

6. Breather

pbs.twimg.com / Via Breather

They say technologists make products that solve the problems that affect them, so what problem does an app that allows you sit in a room for $25/hour solve?

What is your life about when you'd rather pay money to chill in a room decorated by a third-wave gentrification store than say a cafe, or a bar, a park, your office, or anywhere else. There are amazing private public spaces in every city where you can catch a "breather" sans charge.

They might have to change their name, if the kind of people who frequent hotels that charge by the hour get wind of this app

7. UnCollege

upload.wikimedia.org

Silicon Valley titan Peter Thiel offers a $100,000 fellowship to convince college students to drop out and found their own start-up. This certainly raises some eyebrows, but it's not all that objectionable considering the cost of college.

One Thiel fellow's start-up possesses a rather meta quality to its mission. UnCollege, founded by Dale J.Stephens, "is a social movement changing the notion that going to college is the only path to success." If this is an elaborate way to troll Peter Thiel, then bravo. It epitomizes two of Silicon Valley's loathsome qualities, a hubris-fueled dismissive attitude toward traditional institutions and shameless copycatting.

8. Harry's Shaving

coolmaterial.com

Harry's Shaving is like a strip club in a rap video, they just cant stop getting rained on. The razor company has received $211.5 million in investments. All that money for a nicer and subscription-based version of Gilette? This wouldn't be such an affront to humanity if technologists weren't constantly spellbound by their own perceived immortality.

We are bringing the future to the present by throwing Mitt Romney's net worthy at a centuries old business!

Here's a recreation of every single meeting Harry's Shaving has had with investors.

HS: "We're like a shaving Netflix"

VCs: "Take all our money" *Cartoon-style dollar signs appear in their eyes"

9. Rich People Apps

underconsideration.com

Blackjet, the Uber for rich people.

Luxy, the Tinder for rich people.

One Fine Stay, the AirBnB for rich people.

It's like they want us to start the revolution already?

10. Rap Genius

http://rack.1.mshcdn.com / Via techcrunch

If I were a big wig investor, I'd probably wouldn't dump eight figures on a trio of douches who made a lyrics website with crowd-sourced explanations. I guess that's why I'm not in the biz.

Rap Genius has received $57 million in funding since its inception and at this point I highly doubt it if they'll ever make half that money in revenue. The site now goes by Genius after diversifying its content by adding other genres of music and forms of culture, which will probably increase the rate at which they burn through their funding.

And lastly, one of their founders was fired for annotating the misogynistic manifesto of the UCSB school shooter.

11. Secret

theinquirer.net

With Ebola, climate change, and income equality causing peril through out the world, the best and brightest of my generation are working on a digital gossip board.

Now, Secret is a good source of salacious fun, but it seems like its a good number of its posts are flyers for anonymous orgies, people making barely veiled passive-aggressive remarks towards their friends, and random musings. And how much cash did they milk out of investors? $36 million and Pando reported that the founders received $6 million cash out.

12. Snapchat

static1.businessinsider.com

Valued at $10 billion. Equal to 10 Instagrams or 40 Washington Posts. Not a single cent in revenue.

I once wrote a blog post about jukeboxes that netted me $25. I'm not saying I should be valued in the billions, but I've made more money than Snapchat.

The founders had a chance to cash out to the tune of $3 billion, but had to decline because they know someday pictures of teens goofing and behaving naughtily will be a nonstop cash-generating bonanza.

The most frustrating aspect of it all is that central purpose of Snapchat (temporary pictures and messages) doesn't even work!

I for one begrudgingly accept our new tech overlords. They are the new titans of the universe and until that bubble pops, I'm going to be learning how to code.