I don't really know whether this will pan out or not, but I do find it really strange how people defend this move with "examples" like twitter and facebook. Even if we assume that these are valid comparisons, we do realize that neither Facebook nor Twitter is really a success yet and the jury is still out on both of them right? Unless you're using "being able to endlessly raise VC" as your metric of success, then there is still no guarantee that they will actually generate tons of money and match their valuations. For all we know this completely twice-removed model of generating profits doesn't work, and thus using them as shining examples isn't that prudent.