&gt; Not really. Dividends are how investors have historically gotten a return.<p>Both are.  Either way, investors demand some sort of compensation for their investment once the company matures.  If this didn&#x27;t happen, there would be no incentive to invest.<p>&gt; Now that hasn&#x27;t been much of a thing, especially not with tech companies for the last 20 years<p>And this is a problem, although once tech companies mature they generally do return money to shareholders in one way or another.  Microsoft, IBM and Apple pay dividends, Dell bought out shareholders, for example.