"Is the problem that they're sitting there in a city without any other Internet industry, stewing in their own witty ideas, listening only to the adoring commen

"Is the problem that they're sitting there in a city without any other Internet industry, stewing in their own witty ideas, listening only to the adoring comments they get from the groupies?" As opposed to being located in a circle-jerk of similar minded companies and VCs, responsible for the first internet boom? "The whole section "Minority investment evaluations aren’t real" is so economically bizarre and incorrect that I don't even know where to start. It's like you wrote a blog post arguing that it is incorrect to refer to a 5' tall boy as 5' tall because he's often sitting down." If he's ALWAYS sitting down, then it's accurate to argue he's not really 5' tall ―not for any practical purpose, that is. But not only "minority valuations" are not real, but majority valuations are not real either. Valuations are based on guesses, feelings, estimations and some facts thrown in for good measure. A declaration of fact, they are not. Some time they are even complete BS. "Finally, to the main point. Facebook has certainly figured out how to make money off of 500,000,000 users. And as they optimize, they will make a lot more money. When they figure out how to make another DIME off of every user, they will instantly be making another $50,000,000 a year... in pure profit. How much profit will 37signals make if you figure out how to make another dime off of every customer? Eh David?" And how useful is David's products to customers, eh Joel? How possible it is that they jump ship en masse when something trendier comes along, compared to Facebook? That is, which business is based on a solid offering, and which on virtual smoke and manure? Yahoo could once milk 500,000,000 users too. Nowadays, not so much. "Facebook works on the theory that when you have a lot of people, you don't have to make as much per person, because the amount of money you make is the number of customers times the amount of money you make off of each one. Again, that pesky multiplication." Yes, many a business failure was based on that theory. It's the old, "we lose money on each product, but we'll make it up on volume" idea, adjusted as "we make a tiny fraction of money from each user, providing no real benefit or substance, and he can jump ship tomorrow like he did on several of our predecessors, from Frienster to MySpace, but we'll make it up on volume". "It's weird, it's like in Chicago they don't have multiplication or something." Most likely it's like NY has no manners... But the real question is, should someone even partially responsible for Visual Basic even be allowed to talk about tech?