Right, but once you're past the startup phase you don't need the market as a seed investor, you use it as just a convenient (cheap) mechanism for M&A or employe

Right, but once you're past the startup phase you don't need the market as a seed investor, you use it as just a convenient (cheap) mechanism for M&A or employee comp. There are other synthetic equity mechanisms for each of these that also don't require cash or "the market". It's the "can't exist without" satisfying the MBAs that seems off. To the Amazon example, where they persistently show zero profit, that took Bezos convincing your MBAs that was fine. The option of telling the "counting things my textbook told me to count" people to ignore their textbooks is an option more CEOs could use, but don't. I just reject the notion a firm needs market approval in order to exist.