[tacosbane]

I'm not old enough to remember pre-2009 well enough to comment, but since then, yes, it's been scammy.

The SV/SFBay idea of success is what the rest of us would call a pump and dump: burn a bunch of money to drive existing enterprises in the rest out of the country out of business; while providing at best marginal, and usually no, product benefit to consumers; and dumping the money losing venture on institutional and retail investors.

That's success. "Exiting." Not building something new, valuable, or sustainable.

"Oh, but wait, there are sustainable businesses," you might say. With few exceptions, they are advertising companies. Advertising is a fixed pool drawn from the real economy; all they've done is divert it from existing businesses.

Just make sure to pretend you're changing the world.