[djbusby]

For me, I think the big mind-shift was the dot.com explosion/implosion.

VC driven growth at all costs ("GaaC"), monetize later. That's when I first saw it.

Prior to that what I remember was mostly building a small business.

On one you grow and grow fast, needing multiple rounds, to exit.

The other was build a business with one or two rounds, then have a product that generates profit.

The GaaC method also means spreading the company into all kinds of things - maybe away from the core - which I think causes loss in the original value prop.

[cmrdporcupine]

It's funny because having lived through that, we all thought the implosion of .com companies that worked this way, during the .com crash, was a repudiation of this strategy. But it came back within 10 years, and stronger.

I also remember clearly that at the beginning of things with Facebook there was a strong sense from the press of "how the hell will this thing ever make money?" and big questions like that around the IPO. Hell, there was that going on for Google around their IPO, too.

There was a brief period from about 2001 to 2007 or 2008 or so when there was perhaps more responsibility to try to start on a more even revenue-earning foundation with sounder business plans. But that all blew up in the 2010s.

It's possible this was all tied into the massive cuts in interest rates, and QE etc after 2008 that made debt really cheap.