[penguinvondoom]

When you draw the line, for both investors and owners, the unit of value is indeed dollars. The goal is to maximise the amount of money you make (subject to some constraints of course), and the use value that people derive is secondary. I think the two are even to an extend opposed in our world - you want to maximise the exchange value (i.e. the money you make) for the least amount of use value (i.e. how useful it is to the person) you can, because ultimately you do not want to permanently fulfil that persons need - you need them to come back and pay again.

Startups are constrained by the same thing, the whole "doing it to save the world" is just a bullshit story, and monetisation will always rear its ugly head eventually, or the startup will die, because what is doing is genuinely good, but cannot be monetised or ads cannot be inserted in it ...