When Capability and Efficiency Aren’t Enough: Lessons from the DotCom Era in the Age of AI

Charismatic engineers, creative designers, competent project managers. Abundant funding and a bold vision. It all looked like a match made in heaven. The result? An entrepreneurial and economic disaster. Does it ring a bell? The DotCom story is ready to play out again in the era of the AI transition. And this time, the risk is not hypothetical. Left unchecked, it’s almost a certainty unless we prepare.

Because raw capacity alone has never guaranteed success. And today, thanks to AI, our ability to build is expanding at unprecedented speed. We can generate ideas, prototypes, and entire systems faster than ever before. But the same dynamic that once fueled the DotCom bubble is already re-emerging: creating impressive solutions that no one truly needs. Without the discipline to ask the right questions early, acceleration becomes a direct path to failure.

This is where mindset comes first. Entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs must cultivate clarity, humility, and the courage to challenge their own assumptions. AI can enhance talent and multiply output, but it cannot replace judgment. Speed without direction is noise. Capacity without focus is waste. The discipline to pause, reflect, and choose the right challenge is more important today than at any other moment in recent innovation cycles.

Methodology follows. The principles of Lean Startup, validated learning, tight feedback loops, and a relentless pursuit of customer truth, matter even more in the AI era. They keep us grounded. They ensure that efficiency serves insight rather than obscuring it. In practice: smaller bets, faster experiments, earlier signals. Ironically, the methodologies born in the early 2010s are now the most reliable safeguard against repeating the mistakes of the early 2000s.

The good news is that AI doesn’t just create the risk, it also provides the remedy. Used wisely, it can help us uncover genuine customer needs sooner, test assumptions rapidly, and read market patterns at a depth and scale that were previously impossible. It can guide us toward the right problem, not just help us build the wrong one faster. The opportunity is enormous for those who combine power with discipline.

This is why the coming decade belongs not to the fastest builders, but to the most prepared. Those who pair AI’s capabilities with the right mindset and the right methodology. Those who avoid the trap of speed for its own sake. Those who stay close to the customer and choose wisely. The future is wide open. Let’s not waste it. Let’s make things happen, using AI not just to move faster, but to move in the right direction.

Now, then, is the time when we should all ask the right question. 

That has always been what one should do; it is just that hashtag#ArtificialIntelligence makes this more important – and critical – than ever before.

From an economic point of view, I think that hashtag#AI is an unprecedented bubble. This is not necessarily bad though, if one can read it. And, like the Web completely changed the world and how we live, the same will happen with AI, too.

The DotCom bubble gave birth to Agile,Customer Development and Lean Startup. In short, it triggered an entrepreneurship revolution.

The AI bubble will only do the same; only on a much larger scale.

Now is the time to make things; and the time to make things happen.

The DotCom Bubble on a chart

As per Perplexity:

In March 2000, the Nasdaq Composite reached its peak at 5,048.62, marking the height of the dot-com bubble fueled by speculative investments in internet and high-tech companies. The reversal began sharply after March 10, 2000, triggered by several key events and market conditions:

On March 13, 2000, news that Japan had entered a recession triggered a global sell-off, disproportionately impacting technology stocks and the Nasdaq.

Shortly after, major companies like Yahoo! and eBay ended merger talks, further dampening investor sentiment.

A critical turning point came on March 20, 2000, with a widely read article in Barron’s warning that many internet companies were running out of cash, signaling impending bankruptcies.

On the same day, MicroStrategy announced a revenue restatement due to aggressive accounting practices, causing its stock price to plummet and shaking confidence in tech valuations.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates, contributing to tighter monetary conditions that deflated the bubble.

Legal challenges to Microsoft and concerns about overvaluations led to sharp declines in major tech stocks and a broader market sell-off.