I agree with your sentiments, and have also been frustrated by this. I don't have answers but can only offer apologies and rationalizations: 1) I think the s

I agree with your sentiments, and have also been frustrated by this. I don't have answers but can only offer apologies and rationalizations: 1) I think the smart phone mismash disaster was largely because of carrier's keeping phones lock down. Carrier's wanted a cut of every transaction so kept locking out features that could jeopardize their place as a gatekeeper and toll collector. Apple--high on success of iPod--had enough mojo to get AT&T to play ball. After Apple broke the carrier lock down the other carriers had to follow suit. 2) Finance is as much sales and marketing as any other business (perhaps even more). VC's want to buy a company and sell it for a profit (hopefully quickly). Once they see ABC startup being sold for $100 million, they'll start looking for the copycat DEF startup to buy a piece at $10 million that they can flip for $20 million. VCs have to look at the technical risk as well as the financial risk and arguably the financial risk trumps all. E.g. say you handle all the technical risks, come up with a great company/product, but the VC finds out there is no market for them to sell your company. The financial risk trumped the technical risk. What does the VC do now? Hold onto the company for a few years and running it as a cash flow positive business until the market turns? That's what I'd personally do, but I'm not a VC.... and VC's aren't in the conglomerate business (running cash flow positive companies like Berkshire Hathaway, Danaher, etc). Finally, I am encouraged by some posts like this from dshen that takes a somewhat contrarian view of VC/Angel: http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/the_case_for_hardware_software_internet.shtml http://www.dshen.com/blogs/business/archives/the_case_for_ha... Some of the VCs/Angles he cites might be good to look into.