[tsotha]

That was the dotcom bubble for ya. Everybody was swinging for the bleachers and using VC money to pay the bills. It made some sense - you had something brand new and the first-mover advantage was a big advantage. So the important thing was to take your idea to product and worry about self-sufficiency after you had customers.

At some point you have to wean yourself off the VC money. Some of these companies were set up more to land investors than customers, and even though they understood, intellectually, in the long term the money had to come from the customer, it's not an easy shift.