[maxerickson]

I disagree that oil is a better business than Google. Each dollar of gross profit for a company like Exxon requires a lot more operations than each dollar of gross profit for a company like Google (It's something like 50% more now, even after Google has captured a significant majority of online advertising and begun dithering around looking for more businesses to get into). Microsoft's licensing power gives it a nearly silly position in this comparison (but that has long since ceased to be a major growth industry, disappointing investors).

Energy certainly provides an opportunity to establish a huge operation and make huge profits, but it also requires a huge amount of capital.

[Alexx]

Tech has a higher profit margin, but is a smaller industry. So depends which metric you want to use to define better- Efficiency or total profit. Comparatively the largest pure tech (none hardware) company Google is valued at $290bn publicly, and the Financial Times estimates the largest pure oil company Saudi Aramco privately at $2000-$7000bn based on the size of it's reserves.

It's a fruitless argument either way. I simply meant the fact industries with larger figures exist, doesn't mean VCs just look at the random top-line numbers and ignore an industry because it's 'not big enough' when you're dealing with billions of dollars.