&gt; It&#x27;s just too damn profitable and efficient to not become the standard way Silicon Valley works.<p>Not sure I agree with that assertion.  While YC companies market cap is approx $30B (a recent Bloomberg cited estimate), the profits of these companies are minuscule.<p>The public tech giants do need to show profits for all their efforts.  So this model works only so long as all these &quot;experiments&quot; aka start ups are relatively inexpensive to run and don&#x27;t chip away at the bottom line too much.