I am blaming Silicon Valley for building a hype machine that valued appearance over substance, short-term paper gains over long-term value creation. Again.<p>And I&#x27;m hardly the only one saying this. Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, made it clear that we&#x27;ve been dealing with a bubble, and said that the best possible thing that could happen was &quot;a return to an appreciation for sound business execution&quot;. [1]<p>Nobody minds minds that we have companies that fail. That&#x27;s the game. But when we create companies that burn ten million, a hundred million, maybe a billion dollars and <i>never could have succeeded</i>, then that is a major fuckup that is on us.<p>Even if you don&#x27;t care about wasting OPM at that scale, just think of the number of seed and A-round companies that Theranos&#x27;s $686.3M could have funded. If our job is to make interesting mistakes, we should be maximizing the amount learned per venture dollar.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;abovethecrowd.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;21&#x2F;on-the-road-to-recap&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;abovethecrowd.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;04&#x2F;21&#x2F;on-the-road-to-recap&#x2F;</a>