[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).