Arguably the most successful mantle-donner — at least until his recent firing — was Adam Neumann, who had founded and led WeWork since 2010. The company — which rents out office space, mostly to start-ups and small businesses — raised a staggering $12.8 billion in investment capital, at a peak private valuation of $47 billion.

It justified this by presenting itself — as far as it could get away with it — as a tech firm, rather than a stodgy reseller of office space. Its marketing stressed that “millennials are redefining the work force,” and that the company catered to their “productivity needs and stylistic preferences.” One slide in WeWork’s investor pitch deck riffed on the “software as a service” terminology now ubiquitous in the tech world, calling the company’s product “space as a service.” It noted that the company was the “only” provider of this service that was “organized, global, well-capitalized.”

WeWork differed from traditional real estate providers in describing the people who rented space not as tenants but “members.” This allowed for additional innovation in the traditionally boring and predictable realm of financial reporting. WeWork’s novel concept of “community-adjusted Ebitda” puzzled industry veterans by ignoring or setting aside many of the firm’s largest costs and liabilities.

In 2016, the tide of positive press turned against the tech giants. With Facebook implicated in swinging the 2016 United States presidential election via “fake news,” and Google fined for monopolistic practices in multiple countries (and under fire for violating the privacy of children on YouTube), the golden age of tech worship seems to be over.

These two trends — trying to don the Tech Hero mantle, while at the same time tech loses its luster — seem to conflict, but they intersect when it comes to making money. Ever since Microsoft became the first massive software giant, the premise of start-up investing has been this: Take large risks but aim for huge success, such as a monopoly (or close to one) in a valuable part of the economy. Microsoft Windows did that for operating systems, Google for search and Facebook for social media.