Yes, but would those companies have become popular You hit the nail on the head there. Web startups have become a popularity contest. Instead of building reall

Yes, but would those companies have become popular You hit the nail on the head there. Web startups have become a popularity contest. Instead of building really good products and selling them for a price, people are trying to get as many users as possible and then tinker with all sorts of metrics to get "conversions". I can see the reason for doing this if you have big investors and want to sell to a big company one day. But, it seems like a really poor strategy if you want to build a profitable business.