[fleitz]

I fail to see why companies that make money would fail to satisfy an investor?

Is there something about the YC model that makes companies that go on to turn modest profits not generate returns for the investor?

A business like Wal-Mart wouldn't satisfy you as an investor? I wouldn't have any problems taking 8% of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart didn't invent anything new, they just did it a little bit better than their competitors. Techcrunch 1969: "Wal-Mart: Sears for people who like to pay less"

Impressive algorithms don't make money, businesses that satisfy customers do. You're not going to 'change the world' unless your customers are happy.

[tptacek]

Walmart is a world-class innovator in supply chain management, retail engineering, shipping logistics, inventory tracking... the list just goes on and on.

Walmart is one of those things that is just so effective and so pervasive that we forget how important its original ideas are. It's like learning to like music in 2003 and hearing the Pixies for the first time and not getting it; you don't realize that virtually all of pop/rock music for the last 20 years is built on stuff they popularized.

But unlike the Pixies, Walmart has ruthlessly refined and improved their systems instead of breaking up the band with a faxed message from Black Francis.

Point being: innovation isn't always easy to spot in a simple paragraph on a message board.

[ericabiz]

"Wal-Mart didn't invent anything new..."

Whoa! Wal-Mart revolutionized the supply chain. And Wal-Mart also started with a revolutionary idea: We can make stores in rural areas so people don't have to drive to the big city to shop. Every other chain considered those same rural areas unprofitable. It turned out to be a gold mine.

There are several books out there about how revolutionary Wal-Mart has been. I suggest you read one before assuming that Wal-Mart "didn't invent anything new"!

[fleitz]

I don't disagree that wal mart is an innovator and that their innovations allowed them to crush their competitors, but from the perspective of Wal-Mart in 1969 they aren't doing anything new. At that point they're "Sears for people who want to pay less" which illustrates the silliness of OPs POV.

Fundamentally though Wal-Mart's business model is "big truck - small truck" it's just a specialization of Sears business model, similar to how all the businesses on TC are X for Y.