It is easy to be a critic of private venture backed companies valuations as these investments are done considering where the world <i>could</i> be in the future vs where it is now. These kind of bets requires not only financial models but also unique vision and a lot of guts -- traits hard to train but present in most of mankind's big achievements. So it's no wonder those bets pays really well when they succeed.<p>Of course, if you're not a fan of how the private venture backed companies game works, you can always do a traditional business and use profits as the only source of growth. That's the beauty of our current system: it's not perfect but it still allows you to choose whatever path you want to and still have a good chance to make it work.