Part of the problem here is that VCs have funded 100 competitors instead of 5. In a commodity business, you only get profitability at huge scale, and a lot of p

Part of the problem here is that VCs have funded 100 competitors instead of 5. In a commodity business, you only get profitability at huge scale, and a lot of problems like internationalization and fraud prevention to boost revenues and margins take a lot of investment. And the companies that succeed with gimmicks to get a bunch of early traction with an unprofitable 1% or 0% business model aren't necessarily the ones that will be good at solving the thornier problems down the road. 5 VC-funded companies with $60m each would be better equipped to take on PayPal than 100 companies with $3m each.