<story><title>Disruptions: With No Revenue, an Illusion of Value</title><url>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/disruptions-with-no-revenue-an-illusion-of-value/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pg</author><text>I was going to ignore this article as just another piece of nonsense in the same vein, but then it occurred to me that because it&apos;s in the NYT, startup founders might actually try to base decisions on it.&lt;p&gt;So founders and would-be founders, beware.  This article is full of mistakes.  In particular this one:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  most venture capitalists... are not interested in 
  building viable long-term businesses
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
If you do the math of VC returns, they are dominated by the big successes-- the companies that go public.  Those generate much higher returns than the ones that get acquired, and you can&apos;t go public without revenues  in at least the tens of millions.&lt;p&gt;His list of startups that got acquired before they had significant revenues refutes rather than supports his point.  It&apos;s a short list, and even so, many of the startups on it generated only modest returns for VCs.&lt;p&gt;YC knows as well as anyone what VCs want, and any founder we&apos;ve funded can tell you that we tell startups the best thing they can have on Demo Day is a hyperlinear revenue graph.</text></comment>
<story><title>Disruptions: With No Revenue, an Illusion of Value</title><url>http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/disruptions-with-no-revenue-an-illusion-of-value/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nutanc</author><text>A million guys walk in to a Silicon Valley bar.  None of them buy anything.  The bar is declared a rousing success.(Ref:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-_____-walked-into-a-bar-jokes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-_____-walked-into-a-b...&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>