The big, big question facing everyone is how do you make an original comment about the AI bubble.

Ian and George tack away from Cisco vs Nvidia and nonsense PE comparisons and revisit ‘F’d Companies spectacular dot-com flameouts’ - the basis for Ian’s recent blog, looking for real lessons and how not to avoid post-bubble mistakes.

Key points are:

Dotcom was lots of relatively small things and a bit random. Much of the headline grabbing nonsense was for ventures with only single digit $m of funding. AI is big money spend in a relatively few areas.

Much of the nonsense worked eventually – webvan, Pets.com and furniture.com – but maybe not Ocado. Beware of throwing away things that don’t work first time around.

Key parallels – Application Service Providers, short term fail but long-term success (as it morphed into SaaS) – will AgenticAI follow this path when it’s just too difficult at the first try?

George and Ian catch up on events in and around the UK small and mid-cap listed tech.

Big Beautiful Trade Prosperity deal – George tries to put in it some kind of context vs the scale of what is happening elsewhere. Has the UK sold its soul or did that really happen years ago? Look to the positive and question Germany’s and France’s position.

Then Oracle – the big jump. The whole world now knows what it’s like to be a UK small-cap fund manager. The big ego tech boss with a track record of missing results declares that he has HUGE committed revenues ahead of him with limited visibility on both the final customer and the funding, sounds all too familiar What does Larry Ellison understand by commitment anyway – probably depends on which of his six wives you ask.

Feels a bit like Jan 10th 2000 AOL – Time Warner. But it’s different this time – why? Because the internet needed funding and so the bankers and brokers had been seeing the big dollar signs for several years by that point. This time Wall Street has been restrained, and analysts have frequently asked tricky questions, but all that could change now.

Looking at UK company news George highlights SThree’s concerning results, Tinybuild’s recovery, whilst Ian ponders Judges Scientific in the light of Spectris and asks why UK fund managers and analysts seem to be stuck in an analog world.

UK vs US tech valuations – reflecting on wider and individual stocks. Looking at several leading UK tech stocks, including Computacenter, Raspberry Pi and Kainos, George examines the ‘p/e discount’ issue but it’s clearly more nuanced than just growth.

Ian questions why it takes so long for the UK market to trust and understand new tech stocks.

Results from Computacenter with George looking to the US reminding us that UK listed companies can grow globally when the fund managers allow it.

IQE’s profit warning is hardly a surprise and it now looks like AIM could be seeing another departure. So much value destroyed because a once sensible business became more about being a stock than a business.

Gamma’s results show the value of the Placetel and Starface acquisitions in Germany with their strong organic growth. The management look to be getting far better returns on their investments than the fund managers, so surely buy backs are the last thing fund managers should be demanding.

George and Ian catch up on US giants results, reflecting on very different approaches and perhaps outlooks, before considering whether the IPO noise is consistent with the share price performance of UK tech stocks.

Microsoft - AI reality, talk of returns on its own investment on AI but no real idea on those of its customers. George argues that it’s the best placed and bemoans the lowly valuation.

Meta - it's worth listening to the call just as reminder of how different the mindset and culture is to Microsoft, Nvidia, Google and Amazon.

This leads onto what is AI 2.0: What business will be built on top of the cold AI servers? What’s next for search? Perhaps we will see Zuckerberg’s virtual dreams becoming a reality.

Back to the reality of the UK market and how the FTSE 100 rise contrasts with the UK small cap tech share price declines. Just how strong is the underlying local demand for new IPOs at full tech prices?

Finally, George has a few words on the life and passing of the great Dame Steve Shirley.

This week George and Ian canter through the newsflow of recent weeks, Bytes, Accesso, Northcoders and Hostelworld.

Is Bytes broken? No, but its reputation has taken another beating.

Hostelworld’s direct marketing expense reminds us why many startups sometimes feel they are just working for Google.

Reflecting on Salesforce’s recent wins with the US government, George looks back upon the Efficiency and Reform Group in the UK and whether its cost saving success will be repeated.

George and Ian catch up on events in and around the UK small and mid-cap listed tech.

Visma – potential London IPO. Parallels with Sage are inevitable. Visma has grown through acquisition but still delivers on organic growth. It does not, however, scale per the SaaS storybook. A judgement in store not just for London vs the world but PE valuations vs reality and analysis too?

IP Group capital markets event – Ian is hugely enthusiastic and reminded that UK tech is alive and well. The presentations highlighted the scale up issue – where the UK still struggles. The comments re the Mansion House Accord should be noted by public market participants.

Dotdigital’s acquisition of Social Snowball raises the ongoing question whether the UK public market’s investors’ lack of ambition for software companies with a focus on high margins at the expense of marketing and development may condemn UK tech companies to have to play catch up via expensive acquisitions.

Updates from companies, including TPX Impact and Made Tech suggest that UK public sector now has a better sense of itself and is returning spending.

George and Ian wish AIM a Happy 30th Birthday, consider its success and follow Charlie Munger’s edict of ‘invert, always invert’ to gain some context.

1,700 companies on AIM in 2007 was too many (polite way to say it), but 700 now is too few.

The politically impossible bail out is not the answer, but what can be done for little cost and risk to the public purse? Perhaps if we make it more profitable for fund managers, and in particular for those with credible voices, for whom improving the quality of the businesses they invest in is a goal.

George wants to know how you make a Staveley scale? (Other fund managers are available.)

George raises the issue of small-cap and AIM plc governance. How much does it cost, and what, realistically, can a NED actually do? He relates a story of frustration from a NED contact.

Inevitably this leads to the RC Fornax shambles and whether fund managers know how much DD gets done by the NOMADs.

On the companies front it’s a tough market for Hays, progress for Capita and for Oxford Metrics it’s back to normal but with concerns over US university and research spending under the new regime.

George and Ian catch up on events in and around the UK small and mid-cap listed tech.

London Tech Week - George has been out and about and is enthused about by the talk by Gary Turner and Steve Vamas of Xero fame.

More LSE departures - To read the eulogies you would think that Ricardo was the greater success story. Ricardo was just easy to explain and love. Spectris was a bit of an effort to understand but made the effort to grow. Few make the observation that WSP Global, the acquirer of Ricardo, was, not too long ago, a not-too-exciting Canadian small cap that simply had ambition, execution and its home market on its side.

Molten Ventures - the ~50% NAV discount persists. It’s complicated. It delivers NAV growth but it has a primary valuation driver, Revolut – and how do you value that?

GB Group - Whilst the revised management are getting to grips, will investors simply end up with a business model that the brokers could sell rather than one that works?

Brought to you by Progressive.