Start-ups and Pro Makers are today's gold and together with prospectors and miners they have engaged in a frantic gold rush, hoping to dig up the biggest nugget and to find the richest vein. All sorts of ideas for innovative products are being launched on crowdsourcing platforms by hungry makers looking for investors with money to spend; maker-supporting platforms pop up on every corner of the Internet hoping to catch the next Steve Jobs. Remember the Internet Bubble from a few years ago? Today it is Maker Bubble time.

Bubbles have always existed; I even have a book about it. Written by Charles Mackay in 1841, its title “Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds” says it all. According to this book the term ‘bubble’ was coined somewhere around 1720.

Here is an epigram from an 18th-century pack of playing cards that exposed bubble companies and ridiculed investors:

“He that is rich and wants to fool away
A good round sum in North America,
Let him subscribe himself a headlong sharer,
And asses’ ears shall honour him or bearer.”

Kickstarter, isn’t that a North-American company?