You're right - I'd rather play a much longer term game - build a business that sustains itself rather than saddle myself with investment. >> "but some people w

You're right - I'd rather play a much longer term game - build a business that sustains itself rather than saddle myself with investment. >> "but some people want to build billion dollar companies" How many of the big SV startups actually make a profit though? Sure, maybe on paper they're 'worth' millions since people invested at a certain level, but I don't think that's healthy. Isn't it the least bit worrying when Reddit starts asking users to donate money? After it was sold for millions? You can't compare Facebook + Twitter. Facebook is a destination. Their website gets a massive amount of eyeballs and is a big gaming platform. It was always obvious that they'd make good money from that. Twitter however so far is a backend message passing system, which lots of apps use. I'm really skeptical twitter will ever pull off monetization. Twitter don't get the mindshare or eyeballs. Apps that use twitter do. At the end of the day though, I think it's a matter of taste, and what you're most comfortable. As you say, different aims. I'm very much more comfortable with the European way of building companies.