It's all about cause and effect, which a lot of people seem to miss. I remember starting a company some years ago, and our investors insisted on filling the bo

It's all about cause and effect, which a lot of people seem to miss. I remember starting a company some years ago, and our investors insisted on filling the board of the company with politically well-connected high-rollers that knew how to do multimillion dollar deals, the reasoning being that all successful companies have these kind of people on their boards. But this is backwards, it's like saying that all multimillion dollar companies have a canteen for 100 people, so if you build a canteen that will seat 100 people or more you're a asuccess. Yes, all successful companies use an internationally recognized and expensive accouinting firm, yes all successful companies have a welldefined strategy for how to assign e-mail addresses to employees, and yes all successful companies print their annual report on glitted paper. But that doesn't mean that if my small company builds a 100 people canteen, uses an expensive accounting firm, and prints it's annual report on glitted paper it will be a success. These thing are the effect of success - not the cause. The cause of Zynga's success isn't that they don't do a lot of marketing and quora's success isn't due to the fact that they don't disclose their numbers. It's an effect.