I have a strong feeling that this is all tightly connected to the VC culture of the last 20 years. When you're building a business based on cash flow/customers/real demand, you're much more interested in truthfulness, because it will actually make you money. The more you know, the better you're off. Whereas if you get $100 million just because you have an idea and a business plan, it's a lot more volatile. You might end up building something really, really, really cool. But you're also a lot more interested in generating hype/hype-worthy products.

So maybe these bubbles are just the price we pay for for actively funding people