IN 2000, when the dot-com bubble burst, a wave of companies were relegated to the catacombs of failed internet ventures. The collapse of hundreds of major internet companies left the public deeply divided about the future of the internet as a viable technology. Looking back 20-plus years later, this sentiment seems laughable. Today, we're surrounded by success stories—survivors, if you will—of companies that played the long game. These include titans like Amazon, Google, eBay, PayPal, Apple, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. Together, these eight companies boast a combined market cap exceeding $15 trillion (as of December 2024).
Fast forward to today, and it doesn't take much scrolling through the newsfeed to encounter articles echoing the same skepticism that followed the dot-com bust of the early 2000s—but this time, it's about…