[TeMPOraL]

> Fundamentally the best way to make money should be - and in my view largely is - by creating value for your clients.

Should be - yes. And to a great extent it was - that's why capitalism is undeniably responsible for propelling (most of) us into the age of prosperity we now enjoy. But I disagree creating (social, not just economic) value for clients is the best way to make money now. Profit and value motives are increasingly misaligned. It is to be expected - we've picked up all low-hanging fruits years ago. Now the money is being made on gaming the system, on exploiting the fact that profit is only a proxy for value.

Companies nowadays know that they can get away with almost anything because the market has very short memory. They also know they can sell any kind of bullshit with enough advertising, and that marketing expenses have much better ROI than actually delivering a working product. In contemporary marketplace, providing honest value to customers is not a competitive strategy - hence less and less of it happens (it's painfully visible in our industry - it's why most Internet startups are bullshit).

[lmm]

> In contemporary marketplace, providing honest value to customers is not a competitive strategy - hence less and less of it happens (it's painfully visible in our industry - it's why most Internet startups are bullshit).

Examples? People might not like what Facebook/Snapchat/Uber/Amazon/etc. are doing (and in some cases I would agree with the criticism - I certainly think startups whose business model involves getting people to break the law need to be held to account), but they're undeniably providing a lot of honest value to their users.

[TeMPOraL]

I wasn't thinking about Facebook, Snapchat, Amazon or even Uber - those are examples of companies that do provide a lot of honest value (not to mention I wouldn't call either of them a startup now). I meant all your random SaaS businesses that try to "change the world" by doing something utterly irrelevant that's only meant to give them enough growth to have a shot at getting acquihired by an established corporation.

[lmm]

You're going to have to give some concrete examples. All the "typical" SV startups I can think of were very much about creating value for the user. (If anything the lacuna in the business model tends to be around getting the user to pay for that value).