[erikb]

Consider a world where your company always dies after 1-5 years. But for each dying company there's a new one. Investors still make profit, people still get products, employees still get jobs. In that kind of scenario do you really need a long living company? I'd argue you don't. Long life is an arbitrary factor that in itself has not much value.

And the longest living companies may actually be the biggest ones. At a certain size companies don't die anymore. They get merged with other big companies, restructured, or renamed.

[taneq]

Some (all?) products need more than 1-5 years of active development to really become awesome. Every time a company dies, a huge amount of knowledge is lost.