Is Getting Rich Off Ideas a Bad Thing?
I’m honestly still wrapping my head around this from Sam Biddle in Valleywag:
This same guy just cleared, by most estimations, a couple hundred million dollars. In what possible world does that make sense? In our new tech economy, where dreams are better than dollars, it makes perfect sense. Yahoo didn’t just buy a company, it validated, to the tune of a billion dollars, the notion that bad business is worth pursuing. The entire concept of what makes something a good idea continues to be inverted, warped, and thrown in a gully. This is the idea economy, remember–the industry of fantasy. It doesn’t have to “make sense.” Money isn’t valuable. Success isn’t lucrative. Profit is pointless. These are the industry’s norms. All you need do to become a billion-dollar business is make people entertained and vaguely interested.
Personally, I think the most interesting part of @samfbiddle's piece on Tumbloo is the assumption that value = revenue/profit.
— James DiGioia (@JamesDiGioia) May 20, 2013
@samfbiddle I guess my question is this: why should someone not be rewarded for successfully pursuing an idea for its own sake?
— James DiGioia (@JamesDiGioia) May 20, 2013
I don’t want to argue that this makes business sense, necessarily, but I’m not sure that condemning someone for making money off of his pretty art project makes sense. And it doesn’t seem like Biddle is arguing against it from a business point-of-view (that the buy is bad because it’s bad for Yahoo!, or even Tumblr), but more from a social one: that this deal rewards pursuing an idea for its own sake instead figuring out how to monetize that idea. I think the reason I’m having a tough time being more clear about this is it’s hard to disentangle which perspective you’re coming from when you say “value,” because you have to ask “value to who?”
And it appears his argument that “it sets a bad precedent” (in the comments) is primarily social - that it encourages other people to pursue ideas without having a business plan in mind. And that is a worse message than anything the acquisition sends.