[debacle]

A problem I see with many of these ideas is what I would call the profitability mirage. The general belief is that the flow is: $founder->getStartup()->iterate()->getUsers()->monetize(), with a AcquiredException thrown somewhere in one of those method calls.

The problem is that so many of these startup ideas (that don't happily see an AcquiredException before monetize() is called) will fail at the monetize step because there is steep competition in many of these markets right now, and the burgeoning startup mentality means that someone else is probably doing exactly what you do, slightly better or worse, but they're at a point in their business cycle that they don't need to call monetize() just yet. Thus, you may have a mass exodus of users at precisely the point where you try and bring your ARPU above zero.

[dxbydt]

If the default behavior of a program is to throw an AcquiredException after a few iterations, I wouldn't call it an Exception in the first place. imho, the real exception here is the monetizeException.