No, they aren't. The former suppresses competition because it relies on existence of "big gorillas" to come over and buy you, therefore no new gorillas can emer

No, they aren't. The former suppresses competition because it relies on existence of "big gorillas" to come over and buy you, therefore no new gorillas can emerge. Meanwhile, most often than not, big gorillas simply put their new toys on the shelf, thus suppressing innovation. In that regard, entrepreneurs who build to flip are no different from real estate speculators: they make a few people richer, but in the end you'll end up with the same lot of aging houses. Not to mention that "build to flip" companies simply suck. Their products are jokes built overnight as parasites on shoulders of open source excellence, and in the end they don't reward financially anyone but investors and (but not always) founders: it's statistically stupid decision to work long hours as a regular programmer for a startup whose goal is to sell out for $50M after 3 rounds of funding. I like Paul a lot, but his patronage and encouragement (!) of build-and-flip projects is the worst part of "PG culture" that I have the biggest problem with. Especially when he blames VCs for not funding the "next Google". The Google wouldn't has happened if S&L landed on YC.news some day in 99: they'd sell out to Yahoo for $10M instead.