I'd say to you all: get used to bombshells dropping! At some point the investor pyramid scheme will go crashing down. It might be now.
All those companies were on borrowed time. Until investors realised that "data" isn't valuable on its own - it's what you make of it. There needs to be a product that generates revenue. Spoiler alert, it is hard to come up with a business plan that takes plain usage data and makes the technical challenges worthwhile to squeeze money from it.
I can feel it myself as data scientist. The honeymoon's over, investors want to see ROI.
I mean this cycle will probably recover in a few years when the markets recover but still - some lessons stick
Holy shit! Your post made me realize that we are in Dot-com bubble burst 2.0
It's the exact same thing, everyone and their dog, had to have a webpage. Investors finally realized that most websites had no way of generating money, and stuff came crashing down.