I like the article, but I think a missing piece of this is that when a company becomes a big enough conglomerate, parts can be in day 2 while other parts are at

I like the article, but I think a missing piece of this is that when a company becomes a big enough conglomerate, parts can be in day 2 while other parts are at day 1. Amazon isn't raising money from investors anymore, it's taking profits on parts of the business and using it to expand in other places, and Bezos himself is famous for saying a profit margin is an opportunity for disruption. That being said, in many ways the point of business is to end up a day 2 company. VCs invest so they can cash out in the IPO, IPO investors buy so they can sell to other investors, those investors sell to others, and so on. It sounds like the last guy is left holding the bag, but in fact, the people at the end can make a fortune, even as the company is fading away, if the company is distributing profits through dividends and buybacks. If a company dies before it gets to that end phase though, the whole thing will have just been a wealth transfer from later investors to the early ones.