Saying "if Wall Street could assign to The New York Times the ratio Silicon Valley grants BuzzFeed (8.5 instead of a paltry 1.4), the Times would be worth about

Saying "if Wall Street could assign to The New York Times the ratio Silicon Valley grants BuzzFeed (8.5 instead of a paltry 1.4), the Times would be worth about $19bn instead of the current $2.2bn" is like saying "if raindrops were lemon drops, all dentists would be millionaires." True, but irrelevant, and completely missing the reason the one is not anything like the other. Between this article and the Calacanis one about Apple buying Tesla, SV people don't seem to understand the basics of how or why publicly traded companies are valued how they are. Revenue or earnings multiples are not 'given' to a company like an award, they are the result of how a great many investors perceive the risks and upside of a company (among many other things). For a company's multiples to change, perception of the issues surrounding a company would have to change. So just saying "if it's multiple could be X" without getting into the issues why the multiple is something else, or what would have to be done business-wise to get it there, is pretty useless "analysis" and makes the differences between one company and another (and how they are perceived) seem much less than they really are.