This post was originally written for LinkedIn and published on March 6, 2015.

Two days ago, Mark Cuban posted this article claiming that we are in the midst of a tech bubble that is worse than the tech bubble of 2000. Mark Cuban is my favorite entrepreneur, and I am both inspired and motivated by his success. I also trust his business instincts (who wouldn’t?) as well as his technology prowess (software is where he got his start).

He raises a valid point with regards to the valuation and liquidity of technology investments. On the technology front for publically traded companies, valuations have reached outlandish proportions. New technology companies are seemingly all pegged for $B+ IPOs, and the average Price/Sales ratios amongst technology companies is well over 10, and sometimes much higher than that. Compare the P/S ratios of cloud companies to those of more mature firms such as SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, and the story is more telling. New arrivals on the scene have far more investor capital than reasonably forecasted cash flows.

I still disagree with Mr. Cuban’s position, however, for the following reasons:

1. This time is different

Cloud companies and other tech startups driven by apps do have trouble with liquidity. Cloud is a low-margin business, and many of these companies are struggling to balance profitability with expansion. Other applications based on development platforms struggle to equate users with dollars.

I do believe that we are seeing a bubble in the market. There are too many overvalued companies at the moment, but I believe that personal investors are better hedged than in the past.

The exposure was also more widespread upon the average investor in 2000. Venture capitalists and “angels” have provided much of the capital backing these illiquid tech companies. I’d like to think that these investors are savvy enough to have well-rounded portfolios and be sufficiently guarded against riskier assets.

Additionally, in 2000 the tech world truly was a house of cards whereby dotcom companies with legitimate business models were reliant upon other dotcom companies for ad revenue. When one fell, a domino effect ensued. The current environment has a far different model. One tech company is not reliant on another; the larger companies are buying up the smaller for user base. This is more in line with traditional, non-tech industries.

By the same token, there is a more collaborative environment. Software companies are engaging in partnerships with hardware companies to help grow margins on hosted applications. Large financial institutions like American Express are recognizing the value of technology and partnering with technology companies like Apple to jointly go to market. My own company, SAP, has a program called StartupFocus where mutually beneficial profit models are created for startups to build their business on an established platform with little risk.

2. Really, this time is different

These technology companies are emerging with focus on changing business models through technology. Technology can be new and exciting, but it doesn’t necessarily become innovation unless it changes the world of business. Many dotcom companies did not fundamentally change the world of the consumer.

Much has been written on the emergence of the “Uber” economy, and the truth is that technology companies are changing the way we buy, interact, procure goods and services, and transact. Technology is moving from a delivery model to an innate function of how we do business. Emerging technology companies understand that offerings that change how the consumer lives will win in the long-run. The question is simply if these same companies can easily jump the hurdles to profitability before the money runs dry.

Time will only tell whether the eventual correction on overvalued tech companies will be as disastrous as it was in 2000. I would suspect that it won’t be.