Yes, it's "line goes up", but more in the P/E ratio sense, where the price of the stock doesn't reflect the true value of the company, however outside of tech you can usually reason that there's either dividends being paid, or the stock has a base value because if a company performs, and the stock price is low enough, it's worth for another entity to buy it out and take control of it. This gives a stock some real value, and company performance has real impact on the price of the stock. In the case of tech comapnies, it's often no dividends, and the owner has 51%, so the stock gives no share of the profits, and no voting power.
Traditional answer is that there is future potential that they would issue more stock (to sacrifice their 51% stake) or at some point start to issue dividends.
Line goes up is the same as dividends. If you genuinely don't know, you can easily find the reason why it's economically the same, while being fiscally more efficient to not emit dividends by doing a quick googling.
You completely missed the point of the question. They're not the same. Dividends give you a share of the company's profits, thus pay based on company performance. "line goes up" mechanics assume somebody will buy your stock because there's a shared illusion that stocks have value, even though they, in case of tech stock, don't pay dividends, and give no voting rights.
It is you who missed the point. Google the fiscal difference between dividends or no dividends and you'll understand. There's nothing preventing you from selling exactly as much % shares each quarter as you want to create your own dividend, specially with fractional shares. These days the difference is merely fiscal and people that say "if there's no dividends its all fake" seem to want to portray it as bad when for most people it's way better to let it compound and only sell and trigger taxable events when they want to. I don't see how the board of some company deciding when I have taxable events is an advantage if the company removes the same value of shares from circulation by doing a buyback.
Dividends are just adding financial inefficiency and removing choice from the shareholder.
Since you're still struggling, I'll try to be as clear as possible. Why does a stock have value if it doesn't give you a share of the company profits, or voting rights?
You're adding voting rights into the discussion when they are separate from dividends is something I don't understand. You can have voting rights and no dividend.
Regarding the share of the profits I already explained. You have your share of the profits in form of liquid stock that you can decide to sell. It's the same thing.
The discussion from the beginning was about the value of stocks. Traditionally it's a share of profits in the form of dividends and voting rights. If the stock doesn't pay dividends and the founder has 51%, then you get none of that, so why does the stock have any value. That's the discussion here. Try to read and understand the question before engaging next time.
And no its not just tech