&gt; Also, this might just be me, but does anyone else miss the good old days when you&#x27;d start a business and your success was determined by how much money you actually made, not how much money you got a bunch of investors to give you, just to burn on fancy offices and expensive toys, then crash the company in a few years and retire to write a book?<p>Selling equity to investors is as much making money as selling products to consumers. And, to the Nth investor, your ability to sell to the N+1th investor may be as important -- or more important -- an aspect of your ability to make money as your ability to sell to consumers.